THE COMMUNICATORS

[PART III ]

Much of our nonverbal behavior is characterized by change and movement during

a conversation. But some of the nonverbal signals we bring to each interaction

remain relatively unchanged during the course of the interaction. These are the

individual features of each communicator: skin color, hairstyle, facial features,

height, weight, clothes, and so forth. These features affect how others perceive us

and how they communicate with us.

151

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THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL

CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN

COMMUNICATION

[CHAPTER6]

Picture the following scene: Mr. and Mrs. American wake and prepare to start the

day. Mrs. American takes off her nighttime bra and replaces it with a “slightly

padded uplift”bra. After removing her cosmetic chin strap, she further pulls herself

together with her girdle. Then she begins to “put on her face.”This may involve

foundation, eyeliner, eye shadow, false eyelashes, mascara, lipstick, and blush. She

has removed the hair under her arms and on her legs. She takes a curling iron to

her hair. False fingernails, nail polish, and tinted contact lenses precede the deo-

dorant, perfume, and numerous decisions concerning clothes. Mr. American shaves

the hair on his face and puts a toupee on his head. He removes his false teeth from

a solution used to whiten them, gargles with a breath sweetener, selects his after-

shave lotion, puts on his elevator shoes, and begins making his clothing decisions.

This is an extreme hypothetical example, of course. Nevertheless, people do go to

great lengths to make themselves attractive. And it is not just an American obsession.

Venezuela, a country that has won more international beauty contests than any

other country, spends more than a billion dollars each year on cosmetic products,

and some teenage girls get a breast enlargement as a coming of age present when

they are 15 years old (Pearson, 2006).

Surgery to enhance physical attractiveness is increasing. Plastic surgeons

perform a number of procedures on people: reconstruct a nose; change breast size;

eliminate bags, wrinkles, or birthmarks; flatten ears; “tuck”thighs or tummies;

vacuum fat from the body by liposuction, or insert fat by lipofilling; or even

remove the upper layer of skin via a “chemical peel”or microdermabrasion if it

By a man’s finger-nails, by his coat-sleeve, by his boots, by his trouser-knees, by

the callosities of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt-cuffs—by

each of these things a man’s calling is plainly revealed. That all united should fail

to enlighten the competent inquirer in any case is almost unconceivable.

—Sherlock Holmes

153

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appears too blotchy, red, or rough. Over a million Americans have cosmetic

surgery each year, including adult women/men and adolescents. For example, the

American Society of Plastic Surgeons reportedly did 1.2 million procedures on

men in 2004 (Heine, 2005). Why do men and women expend so much effort and

invest so much money trying to improve their physical attractiveness?

OUR BODY: ITS GENERAL ATTRACTIVENESS

People care a great deal about their appearance. If a friend tells you about someone

you have not met, you are likely to ask what the person looks like—you want a

face to associate with the information you are receiving. Why? Novelists present

intricately detailed descriptions of their characters’appearance. Why? Publishers

put photos of book authors on book jackets and in book ads. Why? Most news-

papers publish photos of newsmakers. Why must readers see the person being

discussed in an article on airline deregulation, stock fraud, or the manufacture of

computer chips? Because people think they learn things from appearance. We take

looks as indicators of a person’s background, character, personality, talents, and

likely future behavior.

Although it is not uncommon to hear people muse about inner beauty being

the only thing that really counts, research suggests that outer beauty, our physical

attractiveness, plays an influential role in determining responses for a broad

range of interpersonal encounters. The evidence from our culture overwhelmingly

supports the notion that initially we respond much more favorably to those we per-

ceive as physically attractive than to those we see as unattractive. Such positive

reactions run the gamut from the sound of our voice to the judgments we make

(Hatfield & Sprecher, 1986; Herman, Zanna, & Higgins, 1986; Hughes, Farley, &

Rhodes, 2010). Numerous studies reveal that physically attractive people are

perceived to exceed unattractive people on a wide range of socially desirable

evaluations that include success, personality, popularity, sociability, sexuality, per-

suasiveness, and, often, happiness. Our behavior toward unattractive people seems

to be largely negative, however. For example, unattractive patients in hospitals are

reportedly visited less, remain hospitalized longer, are judged to be less pleasant,

and are less involved with others.

Judgments linked to a person’s attractiveness begin early in life. One study

found that children as young as 2 to 3 months looked significantly longer at an

attractive face (as judged by adults) than at an unattractive one. This preference

for attractive faces among infants occurs regardless of the age (young, old), gender,

or race (black, white) of the face or whether the infant’s mother is attractive or

unattractive (Gamé, Carchon, & Vital-Durand, 2003; Langlois, Ritter, Roggman, &

Vaughn, 1991; Langlois et al., 1987; Slater et al., 1998). Another study found that

6-month-old infants were able to categorize faces based on their similarities in

attractiveness (Ramsey, Langlois, Hoss, Rubenstein, & Griffin, 2004).

Cultural guidelines for physical attractiveness are well established by age 6

(Cavior & Lombardi, 1973; Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972). It is not surpris-

ing, then, to find peer popularity and physical attractiveness highly correlated in a

number of elementary and secondary schools. The perceptions of attractiveness in

a child’s world are not limited to his or her peers. Teachers tend to see attractive

154 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

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children as more intelligent, more socially adept, higher in educational potential,

and more positive in their attitudes toward school—even when the unattractive

children had similar academic performance. As children develop, they are exposed

to these attitudes and evaluations made by teachers and parents. Teachers interact

less, and less positively, with the so-called unattractive elementary schoolchild.

There are many occasions in a child’s life when adults ask in a punitive tone of

voice, “Who did this?”If an unattractive child is available, the chances are stronger

that he or she will be pointed out as the culprit. As unattractive children grow

older, they probably are not discriminated against if their task performance is

impressive, but as soon as performance declines, less attractive people receive more

sanctions than attractive ones. Antisocial behavior, such as throwing a brick

through a window, was seen differently for attractive and unattractive children

(Dion, 1972). The transgression was seen as an enduring trait of the unattractive

child but only a temporary problem for the attractive one. The act was also evalu-

ated more negatively for the unattractive child. It does not surprise us, then, to find

that juvenile delinquents were also rated as lower on attractiveness. In a study of

9- to 14-year-old boys, differences in perceived physical attractiveness were system-

atically related to social acceptance (Kleck, Richardson, & Ronald, 1974).

Although much evidence testifies to the existence of a norm that says “what is

beautiful is good,”physical attractiveness also may be associated with undesirable

traits; for example, vanity, egotism, snobbishness, unsympathetic attitudes toward

oppressed people, and a greater likelihood of having marital problems (Dermer &

Thiel, 1975). These negative attributions, and the knowledge that beautiful people

sometimes experience appearance-related problems, suggest all is not perfect for

these people. The research to date, however, still suggests it is far better to be

attractive than unattractive. In fact, women who were average in looks were rated

higher when evaluated from a photograph in which they were posed alongside other

women who were attractive. Subsequently, these average-looking women were evalu-

ated from photos of them posed with other average-looking women and were perceived

as more attractive by those who had seen them with the attractive women. So it

appears that women can boost their attractiveness ratings by being seen with more

attractive women, and this association does not seem to decrease the attractive

women’s ratings (Geiselman, Haight, & Kimata, 1984).

Although there are some who would like us to believe that “everything is

beautiful in its own way,”there are many reasons to believe that things are

often beautiful in the same way to many people. Within the United States, people

are constantly exposed to standards for male and female beauty through the mass

media, so it is not surprising to find a great deal of agreement on standards for

beauty within American culture. For instance, Lee, Loewenstein, Ariely, Hong, and

Young (2008) showed that there tends to be consensus about the attractiveness of

photographed members of online picture-rating sites that does not depend on the

raters’own level of judged attractiveness.

There is also evidence that there may be some inherent standards for physical

attractiveness that cut across cultures. Studies involving people from Australia,

Austria, China, England, India, Japan, Korea, and Scotland have found significant

agreement on facial attractiveness (Etcoff, 1999; Langlois et al., 2000). Dion

(2002) points out, however, that agreement is higher when the judges are students

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 155

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from other countries who are studying in the United States and when comparisons

are made among different ethnocultural groups within a culture. Agreement is not

as high with more geographically isolated groups. Even if there is a universal and

biologically based standard for human beauty, cultures or environmental cir-

cumstances (e.g., availability of food) may impose certain variations (Anderson

et al., 1992). Nevertheless, participation in global activities like the Miss World

contest may affect local standards. Miss World 2001 was Miss Nigeria. In her

home country, she was far too skinny to be considered attractive, even though

many young Nigerians reportedly favored the new look.

DATING AND MARRIAGE

Physical attractiveness is probably more important to dating partners than it is to

friends or married couples, although perceptions of physical attractiveness still can

play an important role in marital relationships. Physical attraction may be most

important when dating involves short-term goals and more public, rather than

private, activities. Online daters, for example, may be particularly aware of the

importance of physical appearance to enticing visitors to their profile page. Toma

and Hancock (2010) found that individuals who were lower in attractiveness were

more likely to enhance their physical appearance by altering their profile picture

and misrepresenting descriptions of their physical characteristics on online dating

sites. And, perhaps due to greater societal pressures to be attractive, it appears

that women are more likely than men to post photos of themselves on dating Web

sites that have been presented in such a way as to increase their physical attractive-

ness (Hancock & Toma, 2009).

Concern about one’s attractiveness is not limited to females on the dating mar-

ket. In recent years, males have become increasingly vested in their own physical

appearance, such as their fitness and muscularity as well as the need for periodic

“manscaping.”Men, in fact, often think physical appearance is more influential in

women’s preferences for them than women indicate. One group of women—those

who are physically attractive and financially independent—did, however, place a

high value on male physical appearance (Pertschuk, Trisdorfer, & Allison, 1994).

Apparently, highly attractive females “want it all,”preferring a man who is

masculine, sexy, and rich in resources (e.g., money or the potential for wealth),

who will be a loving and caring partner, and who shows a desire to establish

a home and raise children (Buss & Shackelford, 2008).

Based on the preceding information, we might suspect that actual dating pat-

terns would reflect the preference for a physically attractive partner. This hypothe-

sis was confirmed by a series of “computer dance”studies at the universities of

Texas, Illinois, and Minnesota, in which physical attractiveness superseded a host

of other variables in determining liking for one’s partner and a desire to date in

the future (Walster, Aronson, Abrahams, & Rottmann, 1966). Brislin and Lewis

(1968) replicated this study with 58 unacquainted men and women and again

found a strong correlation (.89) between “desire to date again”and “physical

attractiveness.”In addition, this study asked each person whether he or she would

like to date anyone else at the dance. Of the 13 other people named, all had previ-

ously, and independently, been rated as very attractive. Lastly, Luo and Zhang

156 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

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(2009) found that physical attractiveness was the best predictor of men’s and

women’s interest in someone in an actual speed-dating situation.

In light of the many findings that seem to favor the physically attractive, it is

worthwhile to note that there are times when the very physically attractive do not

enjoy all the benefits. For example, women who had more variable attractiveness

ratings—that is, they were not uniformly judged as very attractive or unattractive—

were the group most satisfied with their socializing in general with both men and

women. They also had as many dates as the most attractive women. Some men did

not seek dates with the extremely attractive women because they felt the chances of

rejection were high and that the women might perceive their interest as limited to

their physical attractiveness (Reis, Nezlek, & Wheeler, 1980; Reis et al., 1982).

When less attractive women are in the company of attractive women, this also

seems to increase the chances that they will be seen as a good choice for a date.

So it seems that although there is a strong preference for people who are phys-

ically attractive, other forces enable those who fall short of the ideal in physical

attractiveness to date, marry, and have satisfying relationships. One of these forces

that exerts a powerful influence is called the matching hypothesis, which argues

that each person may be attracted to only the best-looking partners, but reality

sets in when actual dates are made. If you select only the best-looking person

available, you may face an unwanted rejection, so the tendency is to select a person

similar to yourself in physical attractiveness—preferably a little above your self-

perceived attractiveness (Hinsz, 1989). Since this hypothesis was presented, other

studies have confirmed its validity, including a study that included users of an

online dating site (Taylor, Fiore, Mendelsohn, & Cheshire, 2011). So it seems the

least good-looking people must settle for each other after all the very good-looking

people choose each other (Kalick & Hamilton, 1986). However, if you have high

self-esteem, you might seek out highly attractive partners in spite of a considerable

gap between your looks and theirs (Berscheid & Walster, 1969). Self-esteem, in this

case, may buffer the perception of, and possible reaction to, rejection.

Sometimes we observe couples whose physical attractiveness seems to be mis-

matched. One study suggests that evaluations of males may change dramatically

if they are viewed as married to someone very different in general attractiveness

(Bar-Tal & Saxe, 1976). Unattractive men who were seen with attractive women

were judged, among other things, as making more money, being more successful

in their occupations, and being more intelligent than attractive men with attractive

partners. Judges must have reasoned that for an unattractive man to marry an

attractive woman, he must have offset this imbalance by succeeding in other areas.

Unattractive women seen with attractive men, however, did not receive compensating

attributions. This study raises the question of what “other resources”unattractive

women are perceived to have to offset deficits in their physical attractiveness.

Even though physical attractiveness may be valued by both men and women, it

seems to play a more dominant role in the perceptions of women by men. Buss

(1994) found this gender difference reflected in every one of the 37 different

cultures he studied. Women may desire physical characteristics, such as strength or

facial attractiveness, but often rank characteristics like ambition, social and eco-

nomic status, dependability, and stability above physical features—particularly for

mate selection.

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 157

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The relative importance of physical attractiveness for males and females is also

likely to vary with age, desired length of relationship, and possibly even budgetary

concerns.

•For adolescent boys and girls, the attractiveness, not the social status of a

potential partner, is important to their desire to date that person (Ha,

Overbeek, & Engels, 2010).

•For short-term or casual sexual relationships, both adult men and women

place a high value on physical attractiveness, even though women more than

men would also like to have some desirable social and personality characteris-

tics to go along with the physical attractiveness. For long-term relationships,

both sexes value other characteristics over physical attractiveness, even though

adult men still rate it as more important. In one study, male college students

said they were interested in different characteristics in a woman depending on

whether it was a purely sexual relationship or one expected to be long term.

A wide range of features associated with physical attractiveness were chosen

for the sexual partner, but such features played a far less important role for

long-term partners. Female students wanted virtually the same qualities in a

long-term relationship as the men—honesty, fidelity, sensitivity, warmth,

personality, kindness, character, tenderness, patience, and gentleness—but

unlike the men, they also wanted more than mere physical attractiveness for

the sexual relationship (Nevid, 1984).

•Li, Bailey, Kenrick, and Linsenmeier (2002) had men and women design their

marriage partner by purchasing spouse attributes with play money under one

of two budgetary conditions. When they were given a lot of money to spend,

men spent somewhat more on physical attractiveness than did women,

whereas women spent somewhat more on social status than did men. Impor-

tantly, these gender differences were even greater when each sex had only a

little money to spend.

Two physical features of men preferred by women for short-term or casual

sexual relationships were features of masculinity in the face—thicker eyebrows,

smaller eyes, thinner lips, and a squarer jaw, as in Figure 6-1—and a high

shoulder-to-waist ratio. Broader shoulders and a smaller waist may be perceived as

markers of “good genes”(Kruger, 2006; Braun & Bryan, 2006), and these features

may be most attractive during periods when conception is most likely (Little, Penton-

Voak, Burt, & Perrett, 2002). Perhaps not surprisingly then, unattractive men tend to

have fewer children than do their more attractive counterparts (Jokela, 2009).

Apparently the face also reveals a lot about a person’s sexual attitudes as well

as his or her suitability as a long-term partner. Boothroyd, Jones, Burt, DeBruine,

and Perrett (2008) photographed students and asked them to fill out a question-

naire about their past sexual behavior and their attitudes toward sex. Women

were less attracted to men who professed a strong interest in casual sex, but men

preferred the faces of females who had a high “sociosexual orientation”(i.e., a

greater willingness to have sexual relations with minimal commitment to and from

their partner). In another study, men’s testosterone levels were measured and they

were asked to fill out a questionnaire dealing with interest in infants. Photos of

these men were shown to women who rated their physical attractiveness, their

158 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

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masculinity, the extent to which they perceived them as kind, their potential as a

short- or long-term lover, and whether they seemed to like children. Women were

skilled at distinguishing the men with high testosterone and those who liked

children. Furthermore, they perceived the more masculine faces as attractive for

short-term relationships, but were drawn to the faces of the men who scored higher

on an interest in children for long-term relationships (Roney, Hanson, Durante, &

Maestripieri, 2006).

ON THE JOB

Several studies suggest that physical attractiveness may be an advantage in obtain-

ing a job, or obtaining a more prestigious job, and being hired at a higher salary

(Cash, Gillen, & Burns, 1977; Dipboye, Arvey, & Terpstra, 1977; Hamermesh &

Biddle, 1994). Unless the job is deemed inappropriate or irrelevant to the applicant’s

level of attractiveness, the more attractive applicants are more likely to get the job,

assuming all other qualifications are equal. Sometimes attractiveness provides an edge

even when the less attractive competitor is more qualified for the position. Once a

position has been obtained, less attractive workers may be discriminated against on

performance appraisals, unless they maintain a consistently high level of productivity.

Even though both men and women can profit from their physical attractiveness

in the workplace, it is not always beneficial for a number of reasons:

•Highly attractive job applicants might be evaluated negatively by same-sex

evaluators who feel threatened by them (Agthe, Spörrle, & Maner, 2011).

•Attractive workers might worry that positive evaluations of their work

are based on how they look rather than how they actually did on a task

FIGURE 6-1

Left: 50% feminized male composite; right: 50% masculinized male composite.

Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, CT.

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 159

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(Major, Carrington, & Carnevale, 1984). Because physically attractive

women are more likely than men to have their physical attractiveness

viewed in a social context by men in corporate environments, physically

attractive women may feel the need to dress so that their physical beauty is

not the immediate focus of attention (Heilman & Saruwatari, 1979). And

even though sexual harassment charges brought by unattractive women may

garner less credibility with a jury (Seiter & Dunn, 2000), the attractiveness

of both parties involved and the gender of jury members are factors that

may work against advantages normally associated with physical attractive-

ness (Wuensch & Moore, 2004).

PERSUADING OTHERS

Getting others to agree with you or do something for you is often based on the

extent to which you can demonstrate your knowledge or expertise as well as your

ability to marshal effective supporting arguments (Maddux & Rogers, 1980).

But as several research projects show, being physically attractive also may help

(Chaiken, 1986), and people may strategically use their attractiveness around

those they expect to persuade successfully (Vogel, Kutzner, Fielder, & Freytag,

2010). Persuasion success is especially likely when the persuader seeks compliance

on topics of low personal relevance to the to-be-persuaded person; when the per-

suasion involves a relatively short, perhaps onetime, request; and when the effects

of initial impressions are crucial to achieving influence. Although most of this

research has been done with college students, the association of persuasive

effectiveness with physical attractiveness has been documented in the behavior of

10- and 11-year-old children (Dion & Stein, 1978).

One of the earliest studies of physical attractiveness and persuasion used cos-

metics to make one woman look more and less attractive. In the unattractive condi-

tion, in which she wore loose-fitting clothing, her hair was messy, makeup was

conspicuously absent, a trace of a mustache was etched on her upper lip, and her

complexion was oily and “unwholesome looking,”she was seen as repulsive by

independent observers. The experimenter suggested to a group of students that

they would complete some questionnaires more quickly if a volunteer would read the

questions aloud and indicate what they meant. The volunteer was either the attractive

or the unattractive woman. The attractive woman, especially when she stated her

desire to influence the audience, was far more effective in modifying the opinions of

college students toward issues dealing with higher education (Mills & Aronson,

1965). Other studies also support the influence of physical attractiveness in persuasive

situations (Horai, Naccari, & Faloultah, 1974; Widgery, 1974).

The preceding research focused primarily on female communicators, but

attractiveness also seems to help male persuaders. Independent assessments of

their verbal performance, as well as their ability to obtain signatures on a campus

petition, showed attractive men and women outperforming those who were rated

as unattractive. In another study, physically attractive men and women were

judged to have better sales skills, were treated more cordially, and elicited more

willingness by people to contribute to a charitable organization (Reingen &

Kernan, 1993).

160 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

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Is the persuasiveness of attractive communicators due solely to their looks, or

do they actually have persuasive skills? An examination of previous tests showed

attractive students to have higher grades, higher SAT scores, better self-concepts,

and better communication skills (Chaiken, 1979).

In summary, then, physically attractive persuaders, as compared with unattrac-

tive ones, initially elicit higher credibility and expectations for a skilled performance,

although some evidence indicates that physically attractive people seem to have these

skills already. But the advantages derived from one’s physical attractiveness are

probably strongest during the initial stages of a persuasive effort.

SELF-ESTEEM

Is physical attractiveness associated with high self-esteem? One would think so.

But the answer seems to be, for the most part, no. Being physically attractive does

not guarantee high self-esteem or even happiness (Diener, Wolsic, & Fujita, 1995;

Feingold, 1992; Langlois et al., 2000). In fact, it may be linked to lower self-

esteem among children entering adolescence (Mares, de Leeuw, Scholte, & Engels,

2010).

This does not mean that efforts to enhance one’s appearance have no positive

effects on people. Women aged 18 to 60 who used cosmetics to improve their

appearance also reported psychological benefits from doing so. Greater attractive-

ness for those between the ages of 40 and 60 was perceived as most beneficial for

masking the aging process and improving one’s physical and mental health

(Graham & Jouhar, 1982). And training in the use of cosmetics for elderly women

has reportedly had a positive effect on their self-image. What might be more impor-

tant, though, is understanding who might make us feel better about ourselves by

positively evaluating our looks. According to Hatfield and Sprecher (1986), these

are people who have a great deal of self-esteem themselves, people who are sexu-

ally aroused by us, people who look like us, people who know us, and people

who are not likely to compare our looks with media idols.

ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR

What happens when attractive and unattractive people are charged with commit-

ting a criminal act? Are judges and juries influenced by a person’s looks? As

expected, a number of studies show that attractive defendants are less likely to be

judged guilty and, if convicted, are more likely to receive a shorter sentence

(Downs & Lyons, 1991; Efran, 1974; Kulka & Kessler, 1978; Weiten, 1980). The

evidence for attractive defendants receiving lighter sentences is stronger than the

evidence linking attractiveness to guilt or innocence. Although much of the research

is based on the results of simulated juries and cases, Stewart (1980) had the attrac-

tiveness of 67 actual defendants rated. The less attractive defendants were charged

with more serious crimes and were given longer sentences, but attractiveness did

not significantly affect judgments of conviction or acquittal.

Obviously, a defendant’s attractiveness is rarely assessed in isolation in the

courtroom, and other factors interact with attractiveness; for example, the extent

to which the defendant expresses repentance, the degree of commitment jurors

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 161

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have toward impartiality, the extent to which jurors discuss the case, the perceived

similarity of jurors and defendant, defendant verbalizations, and the nature of the

crime being examined. For some crimes, attractiveness may be a liability for the

defendant, as when it is used to commit a crime such as a swindle. For the crime

of rape, the relative attractiveness of the victim and the defendant may influence

the jury. Attractive rape victims may be perceived as more likely to have provoked

the attack (Jacobson, 1981; Seligman, Brickman, & Koulack, 1977).

Once a person has been convicted and sent to prison, some feel that antisocial

behavior can sometimes be reduced by radical changes in appearance. It is

reported, for instance, that a 19-year-old woman with a face “so deformed that lit-

tle kids ran away crying”threw a brick through a bank window and waited for

police to arrest her. “I was willing to die to get a better face,”she said. The judge

ordered extensive plastic surgery (“Deformed Brick-Thrower,”1975). The same

reasoning launched a massive plastic surgery program for reshaping noses, remov-

ing tattoos, tightening sagging skin, disguising ugly scars, reducing extensive ear

protrusion, and removing other deformities of convicts at the Kentucky State

Reformatory (Watson, 1975). Authorities at this institution reasoned that everyday

social ridicule and potential discrimination in hiring might lead to a feeling of rejec-

tion and frustration that could manifest itself in antisocial behavior. There is some

evidence that facial unattractiveness in children may play a role in their criminality

as adults, and college-aged students seem to think that unattractive individuals

are more likely to commit murder and armed robbery than their more attractive

counterparts (Bull, 1982; Saladin, Saper, & Breen, 1988). However, programs by

doctors at the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins have not shown significant

changes in postinstitutionalized behavior for convicts with changes in their appear-

ance. Obviously, appearance is only one factor that might contribute to antisocial

behavior.

THE POWER OF PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS:

SOME IMPORTANT QUALIFICATIONS

As the preceding sections attest, much research supports the benefits and power of

physical attractiveness. No doubt it can be discouraging to the great majority of us

who do not perceive ourselves as highly physically attractive. Without ignoring the

potentially powerful effects of physical attractiveness in some situations, the goal of

this section is to review research that shows that physical attractiveness is not

always such a dominant factor in constructive interpersonal outcomes.

THE EFFECTS OF INTERACTION

Methodological issues may provide some comfort to those who perceive themselves

as less attractive. Although it is not true of all studies of physical attractiveness,

most use frontal facial photographs that had been judged prior to the study by a

panel of experts to fall into the beautiful or ugly category. Hence, in most cases

we are not reporting results from living, moving, talking human beings in a partic-

ular environment, nor are we generally dealing with subtle differences in physical

attractiveness that lie between the extremes of beautiful and ugly.

162 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

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We know little about the socially skilled but homely person whose communica-

tive beauty is greater than perceptions of his or her photographic beauty. We do

know that talk can significantly affect perceptions. We also know that interaction

behavior and facial beauty are the two primary contributors to overall judgments

of physical attractiveness (Riggio, Widaman, Tucker, & Salinas, 1991). When we

talk to others, we become a part of the object we are evaluating, and this involve-

ment has the potential to change the way we see our partner. Berg (2004) found

that even a 6-minute get-acquainted conversation could significantly affect percep-

tions of the physical attractiveness of moderately attractive people—positively

or negatively. College students’photos were rated prior to a brief interaction

and then rated again later, after that interaction. This brief interaction significantly

changed perceptions of physical attractiveness, and for most of them—75 percent—

the change was positive. An examination of the verbal and nonverbal behavior

indicated a variety of behaviors that may have been influential change agents; for

example, giving agreement and support, showing interest in the other person, shar-

ing information, and showing a sense of humor. Behavioral mimicry during an

interaction can also affect our judgments. Guéguen (2009) found that men rated a

woman as more sexually attractive if she had (as opposed to not) mimicked his ver-

bal and nonverbal behavior during speed dating. Lastly, interaction often elicits

information about a person’s personality, and that information can significantly

change initial perceptions of physical attractiveness not only for physically attrac-

tive people but also for neutral and unattractive ones (Lewandowski, Aron, &

Gee, 2007).

Many romantic partners tell stories about how their initial perception of their

partners’physical attractiveness was not particularly high when compared with

their ideal. But they report that continued positive interaction changed this percep-

tion. A man who had been married for 20 years told this story about his courtship:

Initially, I saw her as pretty average in physical attractiveness. I remember telling a

friend soon after I met her that she was kind of chunky. But after we dated and I fully

appreciated how well we related to each other, I saw her as much more physically

attractive. I actually saw her differently. Now I can’t see her as any less physically

attractive.

Increased liking for a person also may follow from merely being exposed to a per-

son more and more, something fittingly referred to as the mere exposure effect

(Moreland & Beach, 1992; Zajonc, 1968).

We also know that people who want to divorce each other find it hard to see

their partner as physically attractive in the face of so much negative verbal behav-

ior. Exactly how verbal behavior affects our perceptions of physical attractiveness

is not clear at this time, but there are indications that it plays an important role in

how we see another person’s beauty (Albada, Knapp, & Theune, 2002).

THE EFFECTS OF CONTEXT

The perception of appearance may be relative to the context in which it is judged.

For example, we may perceive a popular singer on stage or television as sexy, but

the same person in our living room may seem much less glamorous. Similarly,

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 163

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a person who looks good in an isolated rural setting may not look as good in a city

environment, where he or she is compared with a far greater variety of potential

partners.

Bars also provide a unique context for judging physical attractiveness. One

research team wanted to find out if the song about how “all the girls get prettier

at closing time”had any validity to it. Pennebaker and colleagues (1979) obtained

information about the general attractiveness of bar patrons at several different bars

at different times leading up to closing time. True to the lyrics of the song, both

men and women perceived a significant increase in the attractiveness of others as

closing time drew near. Although the gradually dwindling pool of potential part-

ners may have had some effect, especially for those not in a committed relationship

already (Madey, Simo, Dillworth, & Kemper, 1996), research also shows that even

moderate alcohol consumption tends to increase the ratings of physical attractiveness

of the opposite sex (Jones, Jones, Thomas, & Piper, 2003).

Who you associate with may also provide a context that affects your perceived

physical attractiveness. Men who rated the attractiveness of middle-aged women

tended to give lower ratings when they were in the presence of other men and

their rating was made public than they did when in the company of women or

when their ratings were kept private (Berman, O’Nan, & Floyd, 1981). Attraction

ratings also may vary as a function of the rater’s gender. Often the highest evalua-

tions of attractiveness come from the opposite sex.

STEREOTYPES ARE NOT ALWAYS VALID

Even though people often judge another person’s physical attractiveness similarly,

the self-ratings of the people being judged may be quite different. Thus, people we

think are physically attractive may not perceive themselves that way and, as a

result, may manifest very different characteristics than we think they have. Physi-

cally attractive people are typically perceived as having a wide range of socially

desirable characteristics, and although actual measures do show physically attrac-

tive people to be more socially skilled and popular, only a negligible relationship

appears to exist between perceptions of a highly attractive persons’personality

and mental ability and their actual traits (Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani, & Longo,

1991; Feingold, 1992).

ATTRACTIVENESS OVER TIME

Judgments of attractiveness may change over the course of a lifetime. Ratings of

facial attractiveness appear to be somewhat stable from about age 16 to age 50,

but the overall ratings of attractiveness for both men and women tend to decline

as we reach middle and old age, and the decline is more severe for women.

Aging also may reveal changes associated with self-esteem and attractiveness.

Middle-aged women who had been identified as attractive college students seemed

to be less happy, less satisfied with their lives, and less well-adjusted than their

plainer counterparts (Berscheid & Walster, 1974).

In one study of the effects of time on attractiveness, the high school pictures of

1,300 males and females were rated for attractiveness. The lives of these people

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were examined 15 years later. Attractive females in high school had husbands with

more education and higher salaries, but their own occupational status and income

were not significantly different from those of their less attractive counterparts. The

least attractive males in high school had more prestigious occupations and more

education, and they married women with more education than the men who were

judged attractive in high school. The authors speculate that the social ostracism of

the less attractive men in high school may have turned their attention to educa-

tional achievements that paid off later in life (Udry & Eckland, 1984).

Because appearance can be changed, people judged unattractive are not necessar-

ily doomed to a long list of pitfalls or problems. Changes in makeup and hairstyle

have been shown to increase ratings of general attractiveness as well as ratings of

desired personality characteristics (Graham & Jouhar, 1981). Cosmetics have even

been used to aid the recovery and adjustment of people recuperating from illnesses.

Now that we have examined the global concept of attractiveness, we can ask,

what specific aspects of another’s appearance do we respond to? Does it make any

difference how we perceive our own body and appearance? We focus on the

answers to these questions in the remainder of this chapter.

OUR BODY: ITS SPECIFIC FEATURES

ATTRACTIVENESS AND THE FACE

Even though the face had long been the specific body feature most commonly

examined in studies of physical attractiveness, a basic question remained unan-

swered: What is facial beauty? Some features, such as smooth skin and youthful-

ness, make intuitive sense to us (Rhodes, 2006); others, such as averaged or

symmetrical features, not so much. For example, Langlois and Roggman (1990)

found that physically attractive faces approximate the mathematical average of all

faces in a particular population. These researchers took pictures of 96 college

males and 96 college females. The photos were scanned by a video lens connected

to a computer that converted each picture into a matrix of tiny digital units with

numerical values. The male and female faces were subsequently divided into three

subsets of 32 faces each. From each subset, the computer randomly chose two

faces and mathematically averaged their digitized values. It then transformed this

information into a composite face of the two individuals. Composite faces then

were generated for 4, 8, 16, and 32 members of each set. Ratings by students

showed that composite faces were more attractive than virtually any of the individ-

ual faces, and the most attractive faces were composites of 16 and 32 faces (see

Figure 6-2). There is an important qualification to this effect, though: It depends

on the initial attractiveness of the faces used to form the composites (Braun,

Gruendl, Marberger, & Scherber, 2001). Specifically, if the faces used are unattrac-

tive, the composite remains unattractive, too.

Langlois and her colleagues acknowledge that in some cases, people are

perceived as attractive by large numbers of people even though their features obvi-

ously are not the population average. In fact, the most attractive faces are not likely

to be average at all. The most attractive faces tend to emphasize those features

associated with physically attractive faces. A woman, for example, would have a

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 165

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higher than average forehead, fuller than average lips, shorter than average jaw,

and smaller than average chin and nose. Other female facial features often associ-

ated with physical attractiveness are clear skin, high cheekbones, lustrous hair,

and big eyes. A woman of any age who has small eyes, a relatively large nose, and

wide, thin lips will look older, more masculine, and be seen as less attractive.

A powerful jaw and facial hair, although indicators of male facial attractiveness,

may need large eyes and a wide smile to avoid being seen as too masculine.

2-face composite 4-face composite

8-face composite

32-face composite

16-face composite

FIGURE 6-2

Progression of mathematically averaged faces, from 2 faces to 32 faces.

of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, CT.

166 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

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One study found that during the time of the month when women were more

likely to conceive, they were more receptive to men with more rugged, masculine

features. During the other 3 weeks of the month, including the menstrual period,

women chose faces that were smoother and more feminine (Jones et al., 2008;

Penton-Voak et al., 1999).

Another promising approach to identifying facial attractiveness is based on the

principle of symmetry (Grammer & Thornhill, 1994). Photographs of male and

female students were precisely measured at numerous points to determine whether

features on one side of the face are equidistant to a midpoint as the same features

on the other side of the face. For example, to what extent does the midpoint

between the corners of your mouth match up to the midpoint between the corners

of your eyes? On perfectly symmetrical faces, all the midpoints meet and roughly

form a vertical line. Movie actor Denzel Washington has a very symmetrical face,

whereas musician Lyle Lovett does not. Some asymmetry is desirable; otherwise,

the face may not look real. Horizontal symmetry was also calculated, and the

most symmetrical faces were also those chosen as the most attractive. The research-

ers believe these results are consistent with findings that show symmetry is also a

powerful attractant for other animal and insect species. Indeed, it influences how

attractive people find animals (dogs) and objects (cars), too (Halberstadt &

Rhodes, 2003). It may be that across species symmetry reflects better health, and

thus, better genetic fitness in an evolutionary sense (e.g., Shackelford & Larsen,

1999). Of importance, symmetry, like averageness, is likely to garner high ratings

of facial attractiveness, but neither is a guarantee of the most attractive faces

(Cunningham, Barbee, & Philhower, 2002).

JUDGMENTS OF THE FACE

Because the face is so central in judgments of attractiveness, it is no surprise that it

is the source of stereotyping—often based on glances of 1 second or less. People’s

judgments suggest that they believe the human face reveals important information

about a person’s personality (Hassin & Trope, 2006; Laser & Mathie, 1982).

Laser and Mathie, for example, engaged an artist to prepare nine charcoal draw-

ings of a male face, varying the thickness of the eyebrows and lips and the shape

of the face. People rated these faces with adjectives. The features had marked

effects on these ratings: The face with thick eyebrows was seen as less warm,

angrier, sterner, less cheerful, and less at ease than those with thin or normal

brows; thicker lips connoted warmth and less tension than thinner lips; and narrow

faces were seen as more tense and suspicious. But it is important to remember that

not all facial stereotypes reflect actual behavior. We will not know if the stereo-

typed characteristics of people with thick eyebrows and thin lips have any validity

until we actually test this hypothesis.

There is evidence that some of our face-based judgments are accurate, whereas

others are not. It seems that we might be able to tell whether people are dominant

or submissive, whether they are criminals, as well as their sexual and sociosexual

orientation by simply looking at pictures of their face (Berry & Wero, 1993;

Boothroyd, Cross, Gray, Coombes, & Gregson-Curtis, 2011; Rule & Ambady,

2008a; Valla, Ceci, & Williams, 2011). What might account for this accuracy?

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 167

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Maybe we bring out what we expect to see from others due to shared stereotypes

we have about the meaning of their facial features. Another interesting possibility

is that people who are very high or very low in particular personality traits, such

as extraversion, share configural properties of the face that we can reliably detect

(Penton-Voak, Pound, Little, & Perrett, 2006).

Of course, our face-based judgments of others are not always accurate. One

study tested perceptions of baby-faced individuals, who were perceived as more

suggestible or persuadable, but this does not seem to be the case (Bachmann &

Nurmoja, 2006). People think they can accurately judge intelligence and health

from physically attractive faces, but they are not very good at it. This false belief

seems to be the result of overgeneralizing based on an accuracy in judging intelli-

gence and health in unattractive faces (Zebrowitz & Rhodes, 2004).

Whether a stereotype reflects actual behavior or not, people often act as if it

does. As an example, let us continue our examination of baby-faced people.

McArthur and her colleagues examined the facial features associated with age and

the kinds of interpretations people make of faces that have more or less youthful

features; in particular, they focused on the adult with baby-faced features such as

a large forehead, short chin, and big eyes. McArthur and Baron (1983) proposed

that people correctly differentiate traits that accompany younger age but then

incorrectly ascribe these traits—that is, they overgeneralize them—to people with

younger-looking faces, even though they are not necessarily young. Berry and

McArthur (1986) found, in support of this, that people rated babyish adult faces

as weaker, more submissive, and more intellectually naive than mature-looking

faces.

These investigators also simulated a courtroom trial in which a male defendant

was charged with an offense that was marked either by negligence or by deliberate

deception; the defendant’s appearance was manipulated to be either baby-faced or

mature-faced. Subjects acting as jurors more often convicted the baby-faced man

for crimes of negligence and the mature-faced man for intentional crimes. This

result was predicted based on the earlier finding that adults with babyish features

were perceived as more naive and more honest.

Facial babyishness has also been found to affect judgments of attractiveness

(Berry, 1991b). Facially attractive people are rated higher on characteristics such

as honesty, warmth, and sincerity when facial babyishness is high and lower

on those same traits when facial babyishness is low. Because all the faces were

perceived as attractive, this suggests the possibility of different types of facial

attractiveness.

So it seems that a number of social outcomes are consistent with the principle

that baby-faced people are more likely to acquire influence, jobs, and judicial

convictions when the influence strategies, job descriptions, or alleged crimes fit the

characteristics they are expected to have (Zebrowitz, 1997).

In sum, there is no doubt that the way a person’s face is structured and

contoured creates strong impressions on others. Facial endowment may harm or

benefit a person, depending on the stereotypes associated with the features. Future

research may be able to tell us to what extent actual personality and ways of

expressing ourselves will override initial impressions based on facial stereotypes.

We suspect such initial impressions are easily overturned by behavioral evidence.

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As one example, baby-faced soldiers are not expected to be very brave. As a conse-

quence, when mature-faced and baby-faced soldiers exhibit valor, the baby-faced

soldier is more likely to be decorated (Collins & Zebrowitz, 1995).

BODY SHAPE

To add a personal dimension to some of the theory and research in this section, a

short Self-Description Test follows. By taking this test, you can gather some data

on yourself, which can be compared with that of others who have taken it.

Instructions: Fill in each blank with a word from the suggested list following

each statement. For each of the three blanks in each statement, you may select

any word from the list of 12 immediately following. An exact word to fit you may

not be on the list, but select the words that seem to fit most closely with the way

you are.

1. I feel , , and most of the time.

calm

anxious

cheerful

contented

relaxed

confident

tense

impetuous

complacent

reticent

energetic

self-conscious

2. When I study or work, I seem to be , , and .

efficient

enthusiastic

reflective

placid

sluggish

competitive

leisurely

meticulous

precise

determined

thoughtful

cooperative

3. Socially, I am , , and .

outgoing

affable

tolerant

gentle-tempered

considerate

awkward

affected

soft-tempered

argumentative

shy

talkative

hot-tempered

4. I am rather , , and .

active

warm

domineering

introspective

forgiving

courageous

suspicious

cool

sympathetic

serious

softhearted

enterprising

5. Other people consider me rather , , and .

generous

adventurous

withdrawn

dominant

optimistic

affectionate

reckless

detached

sensitive

kind

cautious

dependent

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 169

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6. Underline one word out of the three in each of the following lines that most

closely describes the way you are:

(a) assertive, relaxed, tense

(b) hot-tempered, cool, warm

(c) withdrawn, sociable, active

(d) confident, tactful, kind

(e) dependent, dominant, detached

(f) enterprising, affable, anxious

This test has been given to numerous individuals in studies on the relationship

between certain personality and temperament characteristics and certain body types

or builds. Generally, these studies are concerned with a person’s physical similarity

to three extreme varieties of human physique, shown in Figure 6-3.

Because most people do not fit these extremes exactly, a system has been devel-

oped for specifying body type based on the assumption that they may have some

features of all three types. Let us assume a person’s physical characteristics are

rated on a scale from 1 to 7, with 7 representing the highest correspondence with

one of the three body types. The first number refers to the degree of endomorphy,

the second to the degree of mesomorphy, and the third to the degree of ectomorphy.

A grossly fat person, then, would be 7/1/1; a broad-shouldered, athletic person

would be 1/7/1; and a very skinny person would be 1/1/7. Reportedly, Jackie

Gleason was roughly 6/4/1, Muhammad Ali 2/7/1 (in his prime), and Abraham

Lincoln 1/5/6.

Now look at the test you took earlier. The test has shown a high correspon-

dence between self-reported temperament characteristics and measures of physique

(Cortes & Gatti, 1965). To calculate your score on the Self-Description Test,

simply add the number of adjectives you chose from each of the endomorph, meso-

morph, and ectomorph categories listed in Table 6-1. If you chose 6 adjectives

from the endomorph list, 12 from the mesomorph, and 3 from the ectomorph,

your temperament score would be 6/12/3. If we assume a high correlation with

body features, we would assume you are primarily mesomorphic with a leaning

toward endomorphism. Temperament scores like body shape may change with the

passage of time: The first author of this text was 5/11/5 in 1978, 8/10/3 in 1982,

8/9/4 in 1988, 10/7/4 in 1996, 8/10/3 in 2001, 6/12/3 in 2004, 10/9/3 in 2008,

and 8/10/3 in 2012. Although this test is able to make some reasonably accurate

predictions about physique for some people, it is, like all predictive tests, based on

probabilities and hence less accurate for other people.

We should not assume from this work that the body causes temperament

traits. The high correspondence between certain temperament traits and body

builds may be due to life experiences, environmental factors, self-concept, and a

host of other variables, including other people’s expectations. If there are clearly

defined and generally accepted physique–temperament stereotypes, we can reason

that they will have much to do with the way people are perceived and responded

to by others and with the personality traits expected of people by others. Wells

and Siegel (1961) uncovered some data supporting the existence of such stereo-

types. A group of 120 adults were shown silhouette drawings of the endomorph,

ectomorph, and mesomorph and were asked to rate them on a set of 24 bipolar

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FIGURE 6-3

(a) The endomorph: soft, round, fat; (b) the mesomorph: bony, muscular, athletic;

(c) the ectomorph: tall, thin, fragile.

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 171

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adjective scales, such as lazy–energetic, fat–thin, intelligent–unintelligent, and

dependent–self-reliant. The investigators deliberately chose people who had not

attended college, assuming these people would not be contaminated with informa-

tion from previous studies that might structure their answers. Their results show

the following:

1. The endomorph was rated fatter, older, shorter (silhouettes were the same

height), more old-fashioned, less strong physically, less good looking, more

talkative, more warmhearted and sympathetic, more good natured and agree-

able, more dependent on others, and more trusting of others.

2. The mesomorph was rated stronger, more masculine, better looking, more

adventurous, younger, taller, more mature in behavior, and more self-reliant.

3. The ectomorph was rated thinner, younger, more ambitious, taller, more sus-

picious of others, more tense and nervous, less masculine, more stubborn and

inclined to be difficult, more pessimistic, and quieter.

Clearly, the evidence shows we do associate certain personality and temperament

traits with certain body builds. These expectations may or may not be accurate,

but they do exist, and they are a part of the psychological mortar in interpersonal

TABLE 6.1 THREE PHYSIQUE CATEGORIES AND TEMPERAMENT

STEREOTYPES

Endomorphic Mesomorphic Ectomorphic

Dependent Dominant Detached

Calm Cheerful Tense

Relaxed Confident Anxious

Complacent Energetic Reticent

Contented Impetuous Self-conscious

Sluggish Efficient Meticulous

Placid Enthusiastic Reflective

Leisurely Competitive Precise

Cooperative Determined Thoughtful

Affable Outgoing Considerate

Tolerant Argumentative Shy

Affected Talkative Awkward

Warm Active Cool

Forgiving Domineering Suspicious

Sympathetic Courageous Introspective

Softhearted Enterprising Serious

Generous Adventurous Cautious

Affectionate Reckless Tactful

Kind Assertive Sensitive

Sociable Optimistic Withdrawn

Soft-tempered Hot-tempered Gentle-tempered

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communication. We must recognize these stereotypes as potential stimuli for com-

munication responses so we can deal with them effectively.

As early as kindergarten, children seem to prefer the more muscular mesomorphs

to either the thin or fat body types (Johnson & Staffieri, 1971; Lerner & Gellert,

1969; Lerner & Korn, 1972; Lerner & Schroeder, 1971; Staffieri, 1972). Youngsters

seem to have a particular aversion to the fat physiques. Older children who select

descriptive adjectives for these body types tend to see the mesomorph as “all things

good,”with ectomorphs and endomorphs attracting a host of unfavorable descriptors.

In fact, 10- and 11-year-olds seemed to consider body build as a more important

characteristic in judging physical appearance than deformities, disfigurements, and

handicaps (Richardson, Goodman, Hastorf, & Dornbusch, 1961). The psychological

aversion to chubby figures results in children maintaining a greater physical distance

from them (Lerner, Karabenick, & Meisels, 1975; Lerner, Venning, & Knapp, 1975).

In turn, we find that chubby children often tend to have a negative perception of their

own bodies, which may later generalize to a negative self-image (Walker, 1963). Even

the elderly rate the endomorph as a less desirable communication partner, both

socially and for working on tasks together (Portnoy, 1993).

Negative reactions to overweight individuals are frequently reported. Such indi-

viduals report being discriminated against when seeking to obtain life insurance,

adopt children, get jobs, and gain entrance to college (Channing & Mayer, 1966).

Although only a small amount of empirical evidence supports the bases of these

claims (Dejong & Kleck, 1986), it is safe to say that being excessively overweight in

our culture is often a handicap. Researchers who followed 10,000 people between the

ages of 16 and 24 for 7 years found obesity meant you were less likely to marry, more

likely to have a lower income, and more likely to receive less schooling (Gortmaker,

Must, Perrin, Sobol, & Dietz, 1993). In certain domains, the gender of the overweight

person matters; for example, women’s weight seems to impact the quality of their inti-

mate relationships more than does men’s (Boyes & Latner, 2009).

Although heavier women might represent the ideal in other cultures (Anderson,

Crawford, Nadeau, & Lindberg, 1992), the cultural ideal for U.S. women has

tended toward thinness. This ideal might apply more to white women in this cul-

ture, however, as heavy women are judged more harshly in terms of their looks by

white female students than by black female students (Hebl & Heatherton, 1998).

As a result, women have tended to be more conscious of their weight than have

men. In recent years, though, there seem to be more media portrayals—and a gen-

erally greater acceptance—of female bodies that are not extremely slender (e.g.,

model Christina Schmidt). And men are increasingly concerned about their weight, as

popular male stars often sport cut, muscular physiques (e.g., Taylor Lautner). Another

trend in recent years has been toward the development of healthy bodies—“eating

right,”exercising, and developing muscle strength. These body standards apply to

both men and women and will probably constitute some of the features that make up

the next cultural standard for the ideal body shape.

Research has shown that women view the mesomorphic male body type

as more attractive than either the ectomorphic or endomorphic types (Dixson,

Dixson, Bishop, & Parish, 2010). Women say their favorite male physique has a

medium-wide upper trunk, a medium-thin lower trunk, and thinner legs—a

V-shaped look (Singh, 1993, 1995). The most disliked male physique has a thin

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 173

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upper trunk and a wide lower trunk, or a pear-shaped look. Women who see

themselves as traditionally feminine and conservative in their lifestyle seem to

favor “muscle men”; more liberated women liked thinner, more linear bodies; and

big women tended to go for big men. The best clue to a woman’s favorite male

physique, however, is the type of physique belonging to the man who is “most

important to her at that time”(Beck, Ward-Hull, & McLear, 1976; Lavrakas,

1975; Pertschuk, Trisdorfer, & Allison, 1994; Wiggins & Wiggins, 1969). The

fact that women tend to like the physique of the man who is currently most impor-

tant to them suggests that romantic partners are selected for many reasons besides

physical attractiveness, and that people can favor an ideal body type but still be

happy with a person who does not match that ideal.

The waist-to-hip ratio of women plays an important role in men’s judgments

of women’s physical attractiveness (Singh, 1993, 1995; Streeter & McBurney,

2003). A waist-to-hip ratio of .70 means the waist is 70 percent the size of the hips,

which is considered the ideal. By contrast, the ideal ratio for men is between .80

and .95. Singh says early Greek paintings, ancient Indian sculptures, Miss America

winners, and Playboy centerfolds all show waist-to-hip ratios very close to the .70

ideal. He has surveyed people of many age groups, cultures, and ethnic groups, and

their preferences are for the .70 waist-to-hip ratio. A recent study using eye-tracking

techniques showed that, although men looked at the breasts of a female target more

often and longer than her waist, face, pubic area, and legs, they rated the female

target with the .7 waist-to-hip ratio as the most attractive irrespective of her breast

size (small, medium, large) (Dixson, Grimshaw, Linklater, & Dixson, 2011).

Women with a lower waist-to-hip ratio seem to be healthier and more fertile

than those with a higher waist-to-hip ratio. Other research, however, reveals that

in a few cultures, women with a greater waist circumference and a higher waist-

to-hip ratio are preferred by males. Some evidence also indicates that women with

higher waist-to-hip ratios and greater waist circumference are more likely to have

sons (Manning, Trivers, Singh, & Thornhill, 1999; Yu & Shepard, 1998).

Others argue from their research that the preferred waist-to-hip ratio will

increase as body size and weight increase, even though small and medium waists

and hips are preferred regardless of weight (Forestell, Humphrey, & Stewart,

2004; Tassinary & Hansen, 1998). There is no doubt that the waist-to-hip ratio is

one of several features that affect perceptions of female attractiveness. Another fea-

ture, which has not received as much research attention, concerns the leg-to-body

ratio of females (i.e., length of legs relative to height) (Frederick, Hadji-Michael,

Furnham, & Swami, 2010; Swami, Einon, & Furnham, 2006). Findings are mixed

as to whether longer or more mid-range leg-to-body ratios are seen as most attrac-

tive. Another feature is age of the face. One study found that the perceived age of a

woman’s face had a greater overall impact on judgments of her physical attractive-

ness than did her waist-to-hip ratio (Furnham, Disha, & McClelland, 2004).

HEIGHT

Height also influences interpersonal responses. People seem to know that height

can be important to their social and work lives. Pediatricians report that parents are

often concerned that their child is not as tall as he or she should be at a certain age.

174 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

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Children themselves are asked to focus on height when their teachers tell them

to line up by height. Adults seem to overestimate their height, and shorter males

do so to a greater extent than taller males (Bogaert & McCreary, 2011; Cameron,

Oskamp, & Sparks, 1978). In some areas of the country, police officers and fire-

fighters are required to meet minimum height requirements. Some applicants,

according to newspaper accounts, have actually bludgeoned their heads in the

hope that the swelling would make up the difference between their height and the

required height.

Height derives its importance from a widespread belief that major deviations

from median heights—about 5 feet, 4 inches for women and 5 feet, 9 inches for

men—will incur negative judgments from others. Although some may believe it is

possible to be too tall, most negative judgments are thought to be associated with

shortness. As Stabler, Whitt, Moreault, D’Ercole, and Underwood (1980) noted,

“There is a pervasive social attitude which associates tallness with positive charac-

teristics and assigns negative attributes to shortness.”

Is there any truth to this? The anecdotal evidence is far more plentiful than the

empirical research, and most of the research focuses on men only (Roberts &

Herman, 1986). In a study of 956 students in grades 6 through 12, Sandberg,

Bukowski, Fung, and Noll (2004) concluded that being too tall or too short had a

minimal impact on peer perceptions of social behavior, friendship, or acceptance.

Some psychiatrists echo the belief that sometimes short kids are teased, but that

they get over it and do not experience lasting psychological problems. And there

seems to be little evidence supporting significant differences in the lives of short

children whose parents have authorized giving them human growth hormone to

increase their stature. Still, the belief that tallness is favored in the United States

persists, so we will examine some dominant perceptions associated with height:

status;attractiveness, marriage, and sex; and competence.

HEIGHT AND STATUS Height has long been a metaphor for power and prestige. Some

evidence suggests that height is positively related to authority status on the job for

men but not for women (Gawley, Perks, & Curtis, 2009). The taller of the two

U.S. presidential candidates has usually won since 1900, with Jimmy Carter and

George W. Bush as notable exceptions. When Carter debated President Ford, his

campaign advisers did not want him to be seen standing next to the 6-foot-1-inch

president. Consequently, they asked that the debates be conducted from a sitting

position. Ford’s advisers refused. The compromise involved placing the lecterns far

apart. Further testimony to the stigma associated with shorter people and power is

that behavior labeled competitive for a taller man is labeled a Napoleonic complex

for a shorter one.

If status and power inhere in taller people, are they also more persuasive? One

study indicates they are not (Baker & Redding, 1962). Photographs were taken of

the same person, a male, from two different angles: one designed to make him look

short, one to make him look tall. These pictures, plus a tape-recorded persuasive

speech, were the stimuli for various student groups. Attitude measures indicated

no statistically significant difference between the tall and short speakers.

It is more likely that tallness interacts with other factors, such as general body

size, girth, and facial features. In your own experience, you probably can recall

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 175

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some tall individuals who seemed almost frighteningly overpowering, whereas

others of the same height did not have this quality. Science has not yet established

a clear-cut relationship between a person’s actual height and his or her social

status. Nevertheless, the connection is often made when, without any other infor-

mation, people are asked to make a judgment about height and status. We know

of a woman who earned her doctoral degree under a famous psychologist and

believed, while she was his student, that he was a tall, imposing figure. Later, she

was genuinely surprised to realize he was actually a short man. He had merely

seemed tall to her.

HEIGHT AND ATTRACTIVENESS,MARRIAGE,AND SEX Taller men are frequently perceived as

more attractive than shorter men. The ideal male lover is not described as “short,

dark, and handsome.”Male romantic leads in movies are usually either tall or

made to look tall by camera angles. Numerous sources attest to the important

role of height in perceptions of attractiveness, but obviously we do not make

judgments of another’s attractiveness based on height alone. Therefore, we can con-

clude that height is one important feature involved in judgments of attractiveness,

but we cannot say that tallness is always associated with the highest judgments of

attractiveness. We do know that moviegoers are often taken aback when they learn

that a male icon of physical attractiveness and masculinity is much shorter than he

is portrayed in his movies.

You have probably noticed that shorter people are more likely to be romanti-

cally involved with each other, and taller people are similarly paired up. It seems

that romantically involved couples do indeed tend to be more similar to each other

in height than randomly paired couples (Warren, 1966). Sure, there are exceptions

to this, and they tend to be striking to us when we see them. Sometimes they are

even a source of amusement, as when the 5-foot-11-inch Nicole Kidman stated

that “I can wear heels again”after her marriage was over to the 5-foot-7-inch

Tom Cruise. Perhaps not surprisingly then, advertisements for romantic partners

often give height as a critical piece of information about themselves (Harrison &

Saeed, 1977).

There are benefits and burdens associated with height for men and women in

relationships. Pawlowski, Dunbar, and Lipowicz (2000) have found that married

men tend to be taller than their unmarried counterparts. And taller adult men

report having more frequent sexual intercourse (Eisenberg, Shindel, Smith, Breyer, &

Lipshultz, 2010). Short and tall women, on the other hand, appear to be more

jealous and competitive toward other women than are women of average height

(Buunk, Poliet, Klavina, Figueredo, & Dijkstra, 2009).

HEIGHT AND COMPETENCE Several reports indicate that tall males are perceived as more

competent on the job and are rewarded with higher salaries. Before salary becomes

an issue, a person has to be hired, and some evidence suggests this is more difficult

for a shorter man. In one study, 140 sales recruiters were asked to choose between

two men just by reading their applications for employment. The applications were

exactly the same except that one listed a height of 6 feet, 1 inch and the other 5 feet,

5 inches. Only 1 percent favored the shorter man (Kurtz, 1969). Another study indi-

cated that men who were selected to advance in corporate training programs were

176 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

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significantly taller than average (Farb, 1978). An analysis of similar studies led Judge

and Cable (2004) to conclude that taller people have higher self-esteem, are more

likely to be in leadership positions, make more money, and get better performance

evaluations at work than shorter people. This was more likely to be the case with

men, but there was a strong relationship for women as well.

However, the relationship between height, income, and performance on the job

may not be as simple as the preceding studies suggest. For example, actual perfor-

mance records showed few differences between shorter and taller police officers, but

their supervisors felt shorter police officers were more aggressive law enforcers and

more likely to be a source of discontent in the police department (Lester & Sheehan,

1980). Persico and Postlewaite (2004) found that taller white male adults did make

more money than their shorter colleagues, but when their analysis was controlled

for height as a teenager, this difference disappeared. In other words, there was no

income gap for short male adults who were not considered short in high school.

BODY IMAGE

So far we have discussed our perceptions of others. An equally important dimen-

sion of interpersonal communication is what we think of ourselves. Self-image is

the root system from which our overt communication behavior grows. Our overt

communication behavior is an extension of the accumulated experiences that have

made up our understanding of self. In short, what you are—or rather what you

think you are—organizes what you say and do. An important part of your self-

image is body image, perhaps the first aspect of self-image formed in young

children.

A study of Australian men and women showed that women were in general

less satisfied with their bodies (Mellor, Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, McCabe, & Ricciardelli,

2010). Adult males seem to be most satisfied with their bodies when they are some-

what larger than normal; females are most satisfied when their bodies are smaller

than normal but when their busts are larger than average. In an effort to test the

belief that larger bust sizes were more desirable to others, photographs were taken

of three women who artificially altered their bust size. The woman with the smal-

lest bust, about 34 inches, received the highest ratings on competence, ambition,

intelligence, morality, and modesty (Kleinke & Staneski, 1980).

Sex researchers have frequently noted emotional problems in males stemming

from a perceived incongruence between their genital size and the supposed masculine

ideal perpetuated by our literary and folklore heritage. However, more than 71

percent of the women in one survey agreed or strongly agreed that “men seem too

concerned with the size and shape of their genitals”(Pertschuk, Trisdorfer, & Allison,

1994). For women, reduced sexual satisfaction may stem from greater dissatisfaction

with the appearance of their genitals (Schick, Calabrese, Rima, & Zucker, 2010).

As we develop, we learn the cultural ideal of what a body should be. This results

in varying degrees of satisfaction with the body, particularly during adolescence.

Wolf (1991) and others believe the standards of beauty promulgated in the mass

media are oppressive and create an undesirable yearning for often unreasonable

goals. Such standards can influence viewers’current level of self-esteem. The self-

esteem of neurotic women seems particularly vulnerable to the effects of being

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 177

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exposed to thin models in the media (Roberts & Good, 2010). A national survey of

several thousand adults indicated that between 1972 and 1986, both men’s and

women’s dissatisfaction with their bodies rose sharply. Weight was a major factor

of dissatisfaction (Cash, Winstead, & Janda, 1986). If the prediction of the U.S.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention holds true, that 42 percent of Americans

will be classified as obese by 2030, dissatisfaction with weight will likely continue to

increase.

A number of studies show, however, that we are not always accurate in our

perceptions of our own body size and weight. In some cases, constant exposure to

ideal body images on television contributes to misperceptions of body shape and

size (Bissell & Zhou, 2004; Myers & Biocca, 1992). In addition to misjudgments

of our own body size and weight, we may also misjudge the body type that is

most appealing to the opposite sex. Women seem to think men prefer a thinner

woman than men actually report; men seem to think women want a heavier man

than women actually report. Men thought that having an attractive face and body

build was more important to women than women said it was (Fallon & Rozin,

1985; Pertschuk, Trisdorfer, & Allison, 1994).

BODY COLOR

We do make some judgments about temporary color changes that show up on

people’s bodies. On light-skinned people, for example, a pale color may indicate

illness, a rosy flush may indicate embarrassment, and a red neck can appear with

anger. But in many respects, permanent skin colors have been the most potent

body stimulus for determining interpersonal responses in our culture. Some Asian

Americans use whitening creams and lotions on their faces, arguing that the desire

for pale skin is an ancient Asian tradition associated with delicacy and femininity.

Younger Asian Americans wonder if this is really an effort to blend into a culture

where there is less discrimination against white-skinned individuals, or even a man-

ifestation of prejudice against those with darker skins. There is no need to review

the abuses heaped on black people in America on the basis of skin color alone.

These abuses are well documented. The words of a white man who darkened his

skin pigmentation and experienced the dramatic and unforgettable life of a black

man in America is sufficient reminder:

When all the talk, all the propaganda has been cut away, the criterion is nothing but

the color of skin. My experience proved that. They judged me by no other quality.

My skin was dark. That was sufficient reason for them to deny me those rights and

freedoms without which life loses its significance and becomes a matter of little more

than animal survival.

I searched for some other answer and found none. I had spent a day without food and

water and for no other reason than that my skin was black. I was sitting on a tub in

the swamp for no other reason. (Griffin, 1960, pp. 121–122)

As U.S. demographics change and the number of mixed-racial marriages goes up,

the variety of skin colors manifested by the people around us will continue to

increase, and sharp distinctions among people’s skin colors will become increas-

ingly difficult to make. Still, there will always be those who want a simple method

178 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

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of classifying their social world, and skin color is easily observed. We can only

hope that the number of people who believe skin color to be an accurate gauge

for identifying friend and foe will continue to decrease.

The standards for beauty are usually set by the economically dominant group

within a society. People in less dominant groups are judged by the standards of

the dominant group and, seeing the reward value, may try to mimic the standards

of the dominant group. The standards in the United States have traditionally been

those associated with the features of the people whose ancestors immigrated here

from northern and western Europe. Among other features, they had “white”skin.

There is nothing inherently more attractive about “white”skin or the features

shared by these Americans who had a northern or western European heritage. In

fact, pale skin is more likely to have freckles and is more prone to skin cancer and

wrinkles earlier than the skin of many Asians and Africans. Interestingly, women’s

desire to tan drops when they are reminded of their own death and exposed to

fashion information about the attractiveness of pale skin (Cox et al., 2009).

In time, the dominant group will change, and no doubt some of the standards

for physical attractiveness will change with it. One example concerns the growing

number of children being born to parents from different racial groups. Earlier we

discussed that averaged faces are perceived as more attractive. Given that children

of mixed-racial parents may have a blend of facial features from each race, one

wonders if these children will be perceived as more attractive. Rhodes et al. (2005)

found that white and Japanese participants perceived a mixed-race composite face

(i.e., white, Japanese) as more attractive than faces depicting either exaggerated

white or Japanese features.

BODY SMELL

It is obvious that vision and hearing are the most important sensors for social

situations in Western societies, but the sense of smell also may influence responses.

The scientific study of the human olfactory system is in its infancy, but we know

other animals obtain a great deal of information from their sense of smell: the pres-

ence of an enemy, territorial markers, finding members of the same species or herd,

sexual stimulation, mate selection, and emotional states. Dogs are well known for

their ability to sense fear, hate, or friendship in human beings and to track them

by only the scent from clothing. The difficulty dogs seem to have in distinguishing

between the smells of identical twins prompted Davis (1971) to suggest that we

each have an “olfactory signature.”

Americans do not seem to rely consciously on their sense of smell for much

interpersonal information, unless perspiration odor, breath, or some other smell is

unusually strong or inappropriate to the situation. It is believed that all of us

could enhance our olfactory sensitivity if we learned the words needed to differenti-

ate among various odors. We have a rather limited vocabulary for discussing subtle

differences in smells, which in turn may hinder their identification. If it is true that

we tend to neglect our olfactory skills, it seems ironic that we spend so much time

and money on artificial scents. Each year American men and women spend millions

of dollars on deodorants, soaps, mouthwashes, breath mints, perfumes, aftershave

lotions, and other products to add to or cover up natural body scents. Publicly, the

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 179

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so-called natural scent seems to have a low priority in our cultural development,

but we are not at all reluctant to buy a commercial product that will purportedly

make us smell natural or sexy.

Artificial scents are not always designed for pleasant reactions. During World

War II, scientists developed a noxious-smelling compound they called Who Me?

This product was put into collapsible plastic tubes and distributed to Chinese

children in cities occupied by the Japanese. The children squirted the odorous sub-

stance onto the trouser seats of Japanese officers. The foul-smelling result was more

than just a temporary irritant—it was nearly impossible to wash out (Russell,

1981). Odors so foul smelling as to be capable of emptying buildings and even

incapacitating people may have contemporary applications in law enforcement and

the military.

What is the role of human odors in daily interaction? Our reactions may be

consciously or unconsciously processed, but the message can be quite strong.

During heightened emotional arousal, chemical olfactory signals may even assume

an importance that rivals the normally dominant visual and auditory channels.

Human odors are primarily emitted through glands found in the anal-genital region

and in secretory glands in the face, hands, feet, and sometimes across the chest.

Odors collect in the mouth and in regions of the body with hair. Several experi-

ments attest to the fact that people are usually able to identify the odors of specific

other human beings. These “dirty T-shirt”studies instructed people to wear a

cotton T-shirt for periods ranging from 1 day to 1 week and to avoid using any

perfumes and deodorants. Seventy-five percent of the people tested were able to

sniff out their own T-shirt and those of a male and female stranger; 50 percent of

spouses were able to identify their mate’s T-shirt. Parents can identify their

children’s T-shirt, some only 2 hours old, with accuracy rates that sometimes

exceed 90 percent, and children are generally able to identify their siblings’

(Lord & Kasprzak, 1989; Porter, Cernoch, & Balogh, 1985; Porter, Cernoch, &

McLaughlin, 1983; Porter & Moore, 1981; Russell, 1976). By the age of 6 weeks,

infants respond to the odor on a breast pad from their mother but not from a

stranger. One study even found people able to identify gender from hand odors.

An important qualification is in order: Although we do seem to be able to identify

others by smell, the accuracy rate depends a great deal on how many competing

stimuli we have to judge from. It may be much easier to choose a spouse’s T-shirt

from 2 than from 20.

Smells not only help us identify people, but may also play a role in relationship

development and maintenance. When unmarried women were asked to select a

male’s T-shirt that had an odor that they would like to smell if they had to smell

it all the time, they selected T-shirts from males who were genetically similar, but

not too similar, to their fathers (Jacob, McClintock, Zelano, & Ober, 2002).

Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) appears to be a factor. MHC is made

up of genes that influence tissue rejection in the immune system, and if a child is

conceived with a person who is too similar in MHC, the fetus is at a greater risk

of rejection. Animals often use smell to detect MHC differences in potential mates,

and now we know humans can, too. Women preferred the smell of male T-shirts

that were safely different in MHC from their own, even though women taking

birth control pills were not nearly as consistent in selecting safely different MHC

180 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

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based on the smell of male T-shirts (Garver-Apgar, Gangestad, Thornhill, Miller, &

Olp, 2006; Wedekind & Füri, 1997; Wedekind, Seebeck, Bettens, & Paepke,

1995). With respect to relationship maintenance, Lundström and Jones-Gotman

(2009) found that the more women expressed love for their current boyfriend,

the less able they were to identify the body odor of a male friend, suggesting that

this might be a means of deflecting attention away from other males as potential

mates.

Homosexual men seem to react differently to male pheromones than heterosex-

ual men, and they prefer the odors of gay men. Heterosexual men and women, as

well as lesbians, did not prefer the odor from homosexual males (Martins et al.,

2005; Savic, Berglund, & Lindström, 2005). Heterosexual males also seem to be

affected by different odors given off by females at different times in the ovulation

cycle. Eighteen strippers (lap dancers) recorded their tips over the course of

60 days. When they were ovulating, they earned $67 an hour; when they were not

ovulating or menstruating, they earned $52 an hour; when they were menstruating,

they earned $37 an hour. Strippers who were taking a contraceptive pill did not

show a peak in earnings during estrus (Miller, Tybur, & Jordan, 2007).

Odor also seems to play a role in synchronizing female menstrual cycles. It was

discovered that friends and college roommates moved from an average of 8.5 days

apart in their menstrual cycles to less than 5 during the school year. Another exper-

imenter attempted to explain why by taking odor samples from the underarm of a

female colleague, which was called Essence of Genevieve. This odor was dabbed on

the upper lips of female volunteers three times a week for 4 months. Another group

of women were dabbed with alcohol. The alcohol group showed no change, but

the group receiving Essence of Genevieve tended to synchronize their cycles with

Genevieve’s. This group went from an average of 9.3 days apart in their cycles to

3.4, with four women moving to within 1 day of Genevieve’s cycle. Subsequent

work has examined the role of a man’s perspiration odor on women’s menstrual

cycles. The procedures used in the Essence of Genevieve study were replicated

using women whose cycles were longer than normal and shorter than normal.

Those whose upper lips were dabbed with the male odor developed cycles closer

to normal; the control group did not (Cutler et al., 1986; McClintock, 1971;

Russell, 1976; Stern & McClintock, 1998).

In addition to affecting the menstrual cycle, male perspiration also seems to

have a positive effect on women’s moods in the form of stress reduction and relax-

ation (Preti, Wysocki, Barnhart, Sondheimer, & Leyden, 2003). Additionally,

people may be sensitive to competitive signals (and thus potential threat) that are

being communicated via male sweat. Larger skin conductance responses were

observed from people when they were exposed to the sweat of males who had par-

ticipated in a competitive sport (and thus had higher levels of testosterone) relative

to those in a sports control condition (Adolph, Schlösser, Hawighorst, & Pause,

2010). The preceding studies are important reminders of the connection between

physiological processes and odor. Physicians have long known that people with

certain illnesses tend to give off certain odors, but now we are finding that certain

physiological processes can be modified by odor. It does not surprise us that such

effects take place in the animal or insect worlds, but until recently we have not

thought of human behavior in this way. Today, some people even practice

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 181

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aromatherapy, using odors to alleviate anxiety, headaches, and hypertension, for

example.

Another source of odor is flatulent air, generally adding a negative or insulting

aura to an interpersonal encounter in our culture (Lippman, 1980). In fact, antici-

pation of expelling flatus may lead to rapid termination of an interpersonal con-

tact. Under certain conditions, however, emission of flatulent air may be used

deliberately to draw attention to oneself. The extent to which odors attributed to

flatus or unpleasant body odors are evaluated negatively is probably related to the

extent to which others believe people are aware of it and whether it is controllable.

The role of odors in human interaction varies considerably from culture to

culture. Asians are reported to manifest underarm odor only rarely, but odor

seems to play a prominent role in some Arab countries:

Olfaction occupies a prominent place in Arab life. Not only is it one of the distance-setting

mechanisms, but it is a vital part of a complex system of behavior. Arabs consistently

breathe on people when they talk. However, this habit is more than a matter of different

manners. To the Arab good smells are pleasing and a way of being involved with each

other. To smell one’s friend is not only nice but desirable, for to deny him your breath is to

act ashamed. Americans, on the other hand, trained as they are not to breathe in people’s

faces, automatically communicate shame in trying to be polite. (Hall, 1966, pp. 159–160)

In addition to human odors, environmental odors also may affect human encoun-

ters by setting the mood or bringing back memories associated with the smell. For

the first author of this book, a distinct smell is associated with high schools; each

time he enters one, it triggers a chain of memories from his own history.

BODY HAIR

The length of a person’s hair can dramatically affect perceptions and human inter-

action. In 1902, the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs sent out an order to forc-

ibly, if necessary, cut all male Indians’hair so they would look civilized.

Historically, this is only one of many instances in which hair length triggered an

undesirable response.

During the 1960s, white males who allowed the hair on their head to grow

over their ears and foreheads, and sometimes to their shoulders, found they fre-

quently attracted abuse similar to that leveled at African Americans. Cases of dis-

crimination in housing, school admittance, jobs, and commercial establishments,

to mention a few, were numerous.

The media have regularly reported stories involving reactions to, or regulations

directed toward, human hair, mostly male hair. The examples we provide next are

from 1973 to 2004. Although some of the events discussed in these news stories

might not take place today, they show how hair choices have the potential to

arouse strong feelings in people.

AUSTIN,TEXAS (1973) Long hair on boys and men is the “sign of a sissy”and

should be banned from American athletic fields, according to the lead article in

the May issue of the Texas High School Coaches Association’smagazine. A head

football coach at a junior high school in Houston said God made man to dominate

woman and, therefore, meant for man to wear short hair. Simpson told his fellow

182 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

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coaches in the article that “a good hair code will get abnormals out of athletics

before they become coaches and bring their ‘losers’standards into the coaching

profession.”

NEW JERSEY (1973) The headmaster of a well-known preparatory school, who

sported a beard and a mustache, said about 60 seniors would be suspended if

they did not cut their hair to meet regulations on hair grooming. One student

reported he was told by the headmaster, “I hold your diploma. Either you get a

haircut or [you] don’t get your diploma.”

CONNECTICUT (1975) A woman was fired from her waitressing job because she

refused to shave her legs.

SEOUL,SOUTH KOREA (1980) The national police were ordered to refrain from arrest-

ing males because of their long hair. During the first 8 months of the year, 14,911

men were arrested on such a charge.

LUBBOCK,TEXAS (1990) A mother in Texas did not see how the rat-tail hairdo her

11-year-old son had been wearing for 3 years was suddenly in violation of the

Lubbock Independent School District’s dress code. School officials were enforcing

a policy that prohibited boys from having longer than shoulder-length hair, pony-

tails, rat tails, patterns shaved into their hair, and braids. Her son, a Boy Scout

and honor student before his withdrawal, was being tutored at home because he

refused to conform to the new policy.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (1994) A woman with a moustache alleged that her facial hair

was the reason she was fired.

COLUMBIA,SOUTH CAROLINA (1995) Prisoners at a correctional institution stabbed five

guards and took three hostages to protest a policy that would require them to cut

their hair.

BASTROP,TEXAS (1996) A state appeals court ruled that school officials were out of

bounds when they sent a ponytailed 8-year-old to the equivalent of solitary con-

finement. The school district’s claims that its hair rule was needed to prevent

gangs, teach gender identity, and maintain discipline were sheer nonsense, the

Third Court of Appeals said. “[The boy] wore the same hairstyle during the previ-

ous school year without causing any disruption,”the court said. The school dis-

trict’s lawyer said he would recommend the district take the case to the Texas

Supreme Court. Later, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the school board had

the power to set regulations for hair length for their students.

HARLINGEN,TEXAS (2004) A 16-year-old student who had several cases of cancer in

his family wanted to grow his hair long and donate it to Locks of Love, a non-

profit organization that uses donated hair to create custom-fitted hairpieces for

children suffering from medical hair loss. School officials said this would violate

the policy that forbids males to grow hair that hangs below their shoulders.

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 183

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The school superintendent said that the school district’s success is rooted in not

making exceptions to the policies in place.

Most of the negative reactions against long hair are directed at males. As noted

earlier, men are increasingly concerned about their appearance, including their

hair (Ricciardelli, 2011). For example, some men are concerned that baldness will

detract from their own attractiveness, but just as often, women report that it does

not. Negative reactions against hair that is too short (“microbuzzes”) are more

likely to be directed at females, unless, of course, the male is suspected of being a

skinhead. The motivation for negative responses to these extreme hairstyles by

some members of our culture is an important question but not our major concern

here. The fact that hair length, in and of itself, elicits feelings of either appreciation

or repugnance is the important point (see Figure 6-4).

Other body hair also seems to be important in judgments of attractiveness as

well. One study that looked at male facial hair from a historical perspective sug-

gests that men sport more facial hair when they want to be more attractive to

women, during times when marriage is valued and the competition for brides is

intense (Barber, 2001). But another study indicates that male beards may not be

much of an asset in obtaining a management-trainee position (Shannon & Stark,

2003). Although men with a lot of body hair are attractive to some women and

repulsive to others, women in California and New Zealand found men as more

and more unattractive as the amount of hair increased on the men’s chest and

abdomen (Dixson, Dixson, Bishop, & Parish, 2010). Nonetheless, it appears that

preference for male body hair among women might be shaped by experience. For

instance, Finnish women showed a preference for male torso hairiness that was cor-

related with that of their fathers and current romantic partners (Rantala, Pölkki, &

Rantala, 2010).

What about the hair on women’s bodies? For years, Playboy magazine neatly

airbrushed or did not display pubic hair on its models. Even magazines depicting

figures in nudist colonies were so well known for such alterations of pubic hair

that many subsequently advertised their magazines as unretouched. And the prac-

tice of shaving or trimming one’s pubic hair is common among college-aged

women (e.g., bikini or Brazilian wax) and men in the United States and Australia,

even though the reasons for doing so may be different for each sex (Smolak &

Murnen, 2011).

When nude photographs of the pop singer Madonna appeared in two national

magazines, many people commented more about the hair under her arms than

about her lack of clothing. Some liked the underarm hair; others did not. Many

people in the United States find underarm hair unattractive on women even though

this perception is not shared in other countries. It is reported that the Cacobo

Indians of the Amazon rain forest carefully trim and groom their head hair but

feel that other body hair is unattractive; they methodically eliminate eyebrows by

plucking them. The lack of eyebrows on the Mona Lisa is some evidence that at

one time it may have been desirable to pluck them for beauty’s sake.

The shape of our bodies, our skin color, our smell, and the hair on our bodies

are probably the major factors affecting our responses to our own and others’per-

sonal appearance. Still, many other body features, in any given situation, may play

184 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

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an important role; for example, freckles, moles, acne, and so-called beauty marks.

The numerous individuals who have had surgery to improve the appearance of

their noses, popularly dubbed “nose jobs,”must have felt that a large nose created

a sufficiently undesirable impression in face-to-face interaction to have it changed.

We now turn to how we alter our body’s appearance with clothing, decorations,

and artifacts such as eyeglasses, jewelry, and piercings.

FIGURE 6-4

How do hair length and style influence your perceptions?

Image Source Black/Jupiter Images

Serg Zastavkin, 2008/Used under license from Shutterstock.com Image Source Black/Jupiter Images

Image Source Black/Jupiter Images

Image Source Black/Jupiter ImagesImage Source Black/Jupiter Images

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 185

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OUR BODY: CLOTHES AND OTHER ARTIFACTS

As early as 1954, Hoult’s experiments verified what we take to be common sense

today—that you can change people’sperceptionsofsomeonebychangingthatperson’s

clothing. We do not have to look far to find evidence in our daily world to confirm

Hoult’sfinding.TheAssociatedPressoncereportedthattheLutheranChurchbelieved

the attire worn by clergy in the pulpit was responsible for some churchgoers’switching

denominations. Many tailors, manufacturers, and sellers of clothes claim to be

“wardrobe engineers”who structure their clients’outward appearance to increase

their sales, assert their authority, or win more court cases. Career specialists tell us that

ajobapplicant’sattireandgroomingareimportantindicatorsofhisorherattitude

toward the company and that appropriate dress aids career advancement. Major

League Baseball recently passed a dress code that prohibits members of the media, such

as reporters, from wearing flip-flops, short skirts, and tank tops on the job. Apparently

the ruling authorities of Major League Baseball believe that outfits that show more skin

do not communicate the level of professionalism expected of reporters.

Some research supports the belief that clothes are an important factor in first

impressions. Males and females were asked what they notice about people when

they first meet them, and they were given 10 characteristics of appearance from

which to choose. Females noticed clothes first for both same- and opposite-sex

people; males also looked at clothes first for same-sex people, but for members of

the opposite sex, clothes took third place behind figure and face (“First Impres-

sions,”1983). Positive first impressions of a person’s clothing style are also more

likely if the styles of the person being judged and the person doing the judging are

similar (Reid, Lancuba, & Morrow, 1997).

School dress codes also provide clear testimony that people believe clothes com-

municate important messages. The Associated Press reported in 1994 that several

Houston-area school districts outlawed what they called the grunge look. Students

were prohibited from wearing baggy pants; untucked shirts; piercings in the lips,

nose, and eyebrows; torn or ripped clothing; duster-type coats; or trench coats.

Earrings were prohibited for boys, and girls could not wear miniskirts; tank tops;

cutoffs; halter tops; strapless garments; or casual pants, dress slacks, or skirts worn

on hips. These school administrators, like administrators in other school districts

with similar dress and grooming restrictions, wanted to ban clothing that could

hide weapons, that might convey gang or drug-related messages, or that seemed sex-

ually provocative, and to encourage clothing that would convey what they believed

to be a safe, respectful, and positive learning environment. Although many second-

ary school students agreed with some of these restrictions, they did not perceive

others as detracting from a positive learning environment—for example, beards,

elongated arm holes on shirts, hair not its natural color, tank tops, and sunglasses.

We can make two important conclusions from the preceding examples: (1) right

or wrong, many people believe clothes communicate important messages; and

(2) clothing communicates most effectively when it is adapted to the wearer’s role

and the attendant surroundings. This second conclusion relates to the earlier testi-

mony about how to dress for job interviews and make positive first impressions. It

is also supported by research in which well-dressed participants and participants

who were dressed sloppily asked strangers for money to make a phone call. When

well dressed, those requesting aid received more cooperation in a clean, neatly

186 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

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appointed airport, where most of the people were also well dressed; when partici-

pants were poorly dressed, the greatest cooperation was obtained from strangers in

a bus station, where the people and surroundings more closely resembled the partici-

pant’s state of poor dress (Hensley, 1981). Sometimes we are very much aware of

what attire fits the situation. Most people know, for example, that the business out-

fits of working women on television programs are sexier and often inappropriate for

women who do not work “on camera”(White, 1995). Other situations are not so

clear, as Victoria Clarke, then assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, found

out in 2003. She was criticized by some for wearing bright colors while answering

questions about the war in Iraq. Some, mainly men, argued that pink is not an

appropriate color in a time of war (Givhan, 2003).

Examine the clothing types shown in Figure 6-5. What are your first impressions?

FIGURE 6-5

Four clothing styles.

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 187

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The following is a list of 20 characteristics that may be associated with one or more

of these clothing types. Check the spaces you think apply to specific clothing types,

and compare your impressions with those of your friends, family, and associates.

Males Females

12341234

1. Has smoked marijuana

2. Is shy, doesn’t talk much

3. Is a fraternity or sorority member

4. Is a Democrat

5. Is involved in athletics

6. Is married

7. Is generous

8. Drives a sports car

9. Is a Republican

10. Is vocationally oriented

11. Is active politically

12. Is dependable

13. Listens most to classical music

14. Lives with parents

15. Has long hair

16. Has many friends

17. Is intelligent

18. Is religious

19. Is open-minded

20. Is older

Did you find any similarities in your responses and those of your peers? Were there

any major differences between your responses and the responses of people with dis-

tinctly different backgrounds? Later in this chapter, we focus on what specific mes-

sages and impressions clothes communicate, but first let us consider the fundamental

question: Is clothing, in and of itself, an important factor in communicating?

FUNCTIONS OF CLOTHING

To understand the relationship between clothes and communication, we must be

familiar with the various functions clothes can fulfill: decoration, physical and

psychological protection, sexual attraction, self-assertion, self-denial, concealment,

group identification, persuasion, attitude, ideology, mood reflection or creation,

authority, and status or role display (Barnard, 2001). For example, Tiggermann

and Lacey (2009) reported that women’s dissatisfaction with their body was related

to the greater use of clothing for camouflage purposes.

188 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

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Other functions are related to norm adherence and gender-role expectations

and opportunities. Because some widely accepted cultural rules and social norms

apply for combining certain colors and styles of dress, clothes can function to

inform the observer of a person’s knowledge or awareness of such rules (see “The

Lowdown on Fashion Trends”). Intrasex recreation that stems from gender-linked

opportunities may explain females’greater interest in clothing. Griffiths (1988)

argues that females have fewer choices than do males for recreational activities.

Learning about fashion is something that females spend a lot of time on, especially

during adolescence through young adulthood. This activity may thus function as a

common, acceptable form of recreation for them (Bloch, 1993). It is interesting to

note that this behavior is even observed in virtual settings; Guadagno, Muscanell,

Okdie, Burk, and Ward (2011) found that women were more likely than men to

buy clothes/objects for their avatars.

Clothing that functions as a means of persuasion has been the subject of

numerous studies. An old but classic study tested the ability of people dressed in

“high-status”clothing to get unsuspecting bystanders to violate a traffic light.

Lefkowitz, Blake, and Mouton (1955) found pedestrians much more likely to

violate a traffic light at an intersection if another person violated it ahead of them,

especially if that other person’s attire represented a person with social status. Other

studies have found that a variety of requests—to make change, accept leaflets, give

detailed street directions, return money left in a phone booth, and so on—are more

easily accomplished if the requester is dressed to fit the situation or is dressed in

what would be considered high-status clothing (Fortenberry, MacLean, Morris, &

O’Connell, 1978; Levine, Bluni, & Hochman, 1998). Bickman (1974a, 1974b),

for example, had four men stop 153 adults on the streets of Brooklyn and make

various requests. The men’s clothing varied and included civilian clothing,

THE LOWDOWN ON FASHION TRENDS

What nonverbal message is she communicating? As a

college student in the United States, she might be

signaling her awareness and acceptance of fashion

norms concerning how she can identify herself as

female through style of dress. Interestingly, what is

acceptable today—partially exposed butt crack

among women wearing low-rise jeans—was not a

while ago. It used to be referred to as plumber’s butt,

a decidedly pejorative label. This suggests that non-

verbal messages linked to fashion may be subject to

shifting conformity pressures. Chances are one day

wearing pants that low will no longer be fashionable.

Women who continue to do so might then be

communicating a different nonverbal message to others, such as “I’m old-fashioned.”In fact, this might be

starting to happen already, as this fashion trend appears to be fading.

gopenshaw/Big Stock Photo

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 189

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comprising a sport jacket and tie; a milkman’s white uniform; and a guard’s uni-

form, with a badge and insignia but no gun. The men asked pedestrians to pick

up a bag, to put a dime in a parking meter for someone else, or to stand on the

opposite side of a bus-stop sign. In each case, when dressed in the guard uniform,

the men received greater compliance. In fact, 83 percent of those who were asked

to put a dime in the parking meter obeyed, even after the person in the guard uni-

form had left the scene. Uniforms do help people identify the wearer’s probable

areas of expertise, and this knowledge can be persuasive. In public service

announcements, the same woman dressed as a nurse or as a businesswoman asked

for contributions to fight leukemia. The nurse was judged to be more knowledge-

able and received more pledged contributions (Lawrence & Watson, 1991). Uni-

formed police officers want their uniform to be persuasive, but it is sometimes

difficult because of the different goals associated with their job. It was debated

whether the same uniform can communicate approachability and friendliness as

well as authoritativeness in enforcing the law (Young, 1999). Lawyers have long

known that their clients’manner of dress can have a persuasive impact on the judg-

ments made by a judge or jury. Some defendants have even been encouraged to put

on a ring that simulates a wedding ring to offset any prejudice against single people.

CLOTHING AS INFORMATION ABOUT THE PERSON

To make a list of the things invariably communicated by clothes would be impossi-

ble; such a list would vary with the demands of each particular situation, ethnic

group, time of day and era, region of the country, and, for women, even the phase

of their monthly ovulatory cycle. Women, for example, may choose sexier clothes

to wear when they are close to ovulating (Durante, Griskevicius, Hill, Perilloux, &

Li, 2011). Making the task even harder is the fact that any given item of clothing

can be worn in such a way as to convey multiple meanings. The design of a tie

may convey sophistication and status, but the way it is knotted or worn—tight or

loose, thrown over the shoulder—can send other messages.

Some of the personal attributes communicated by dress include sex, age, nation-

ality, relation to a companion (e.g., matching sweaters), socioeconomic status, iden-

tification with a specific group, occupational or official status, mood, personality,

attitudes, interests, and values. Clothes also set our expectations for the behavior of

the wearer. When the target of our observations is a person well known to us, that

knowledge will guide our interpretations of clothing. We may, for example, see radi-

cal clothing changes as representing temporary moods rather than lasting personality

changes. Obviously, the accuracy of such judgments varies considerably; it is signifi-

cant to note that the more concrete items such as age, sex, and socioeconomic status

are signaled with greater accuracy than more abstract qualities such as attitudes,

values, and personality. In recent years, the “message”T-shirt has become a vehicle

for communicating some attitudes that might otherwise be more difficult to assess.

EFFECTS OF CLOTHING ON THE WEARER

Up to this point, we have established that clothing communicates a variety of mes-

sages, and the people we interact with respond in various ways to those messages.

But what about the effect of clothing on the self-image of the wearer? Some

190 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

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authors feel that clothes help satisfy an image of a person’s ideal self. Gibbins, in

his work with 15- and 16-year-old girls, for instance, found a definite relationship

between clothes that were liked and ratings of ideal self. Clothing was a means of

communicating messages about the wearer, and liking for a particular outfit was

“related to the extent to which this message is similar to the subject’s ideal self-

image”(Gibbins, 1969). In another fascinating discovery, we see a potential link

between clothing and self-concept. High school boys who had higher achievement

test scores but who wore clothing deemed “unacceptable”by their peers were

found to have lower grade-point averages than those who wore “acceptable”cloth-

ing (Hamilton & Warden, 1966). This latter group also found themselves in less

conflict and in more school activities. Clothes, then, may encourage or discourage

certain patterns of communication. A new outfit may promote feelings of gaiety

and happiness, people may feel less efficient in shoes that hurt, and self-

consciousness may result from wearing an “inappropriate”outfit, a common feel-

ing for adolescents trying to grapple with their own self-image. Some graduate

teaching assistants wear suits to class to distinguish themselves from their students

who frequently are almost the same age. Some report that such attire gives them

added confidence or assurance in dealing with their students, but their attire seems

to have relatively little effect on the perceptions of their students when compared

with their behavior (Gorham, Cohen, & Morris, 1999; Roach, 1997).

The mutual effects of clothing on the wearer and on the perceiver were amply

demonstrated in a study of the uniforms worn by teams in the National Hockey

League and National Football League. In this study, teams with black uniforms

ranked near the top of their leagues in penalties, and those teams that switched from

nonblack to black uniforms incurred more penalties after the switch. The authors sug-

gest that wearers of black uniforms perceive themselves as more aggressive and that

this, coupled with similar perceptions by referees, leads to more penalties (Frank &

Gilovich, 1988). In a study involving nurses, wearing “patient clothing”led to feelings

of comfort as well as stigmatization and depersonalization Edvardsson (2009).

The issue of wearing uniforms to school has gained a great deal of notoriety

in recent years. One of the prominent arguments for adopting school uniforms is

that the style of dress changes how wearers feel about themselves and, in turn,

changes behavior. One large-scale study of 10th-grade students did not find any

direct effects of uniforms on substance use, behavioral problems, or attendance

but did find a negative effect on achievement (Brunsma & Rockquemore, 1998).

For some students, uniforms provide a needed form of structure and control, and

they are a symbol of school unity, but it is not realistic to expect uniforms to

eliminate most of the offensive behaviors manifested by troubled teens. School

uniforms by themselves—without the support of students, teachers, school admin-

istrators, and parents—are not likely to accomplish much.

CLOTHING AND PERSONALITY

Rosenfeld and Plax (1977) wanted to determine whether attitudes toward clothing

are related to certain personality characteristics. Their study obtained responses

from both males and females on a questionnaire about clothing attitudes. A massive

battery of personality tests also was given to this group of 371 men and women.

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 191

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The results of these personality tests were then matched with the scores on four

dimensions of the clothing questionnaire. Results are listed for males and females

who scored high or low on one of the dimensions: exhibitionism (“I approve of

skimpy bathing suits and wouldn’t mind wearing one myself”).

•High males were aggressive, confident, outgoing, unsympathetic, unaffection-

ate, moody, and impulsive, and had a low self-concept regarding their familial

interactions.

•High females were radical, detached from interpersonal relationships, and had

a high opinion of their own self-worth and moral/ethical beliefs.

•Low males were guarded about self-revelations. They had a low self-concept

regarding their familial interactions, and they believed people could be easily

manipulated.

•Low females were timid, sincere, accepting of others, and patient, and had a low

motivation for heterosexual relationships. They also had feelings of inferiority.

Can we accurately perceive some personality traits from the way people dress? It

appears that a person’s style of dress may offer diagnostic clues to his or her

personality traits (Back et al., 2010; Borkenau, P., & Liebler, A. (1993a); Vazire,

Naumann, Rentfrow, & Gosling, 2009). Stylish clothes and haircuts can lead us

to accurately see the trait of extraversion in others Borkenau, P., & Liebler, A.

(1993b). Fancy clothes can also contribute to the initial positivity that we feel

toward those whose personality traits can be problematic to us in the long run,

such as is the case with narcissists (Back, Schmukle, & Egloff, 2010).

ARTIFACTS AND BODY DECORATIONS

People adorn themselves with badges, tattoos, masks, earrings, personal aids and

devices (glasses, watches), accessories (hats), and jewelry, among other things.We

must take these artifacts and decorations into consideration in any discussion of

clothing because they are also potential communicative stimuli. A ring worn on a

particular finger, a fraternity or sorority pin worn in a particular configuration,

and a single earring worn in a particular ear all may communicate something

about the nature of a person’s relationships and self-image.

We know that people around the world choose to decorate and alter their

bodies in a variety of ways, sometimes temporarily with body paint, sometimes

permanently with tattoos (see Figure 6-6 and Figure 6-7). The body can be scarred,

mutilated, or painted, and in the case of binding infants’feet or heads, the bone

structure, reshaped. In our society, we circumcise many male children, and the

piercing of various body parts with rings has become increasingly popular with

young adults in recent years. And, as you probably have noticed on your campus,

the use of tattoos to decorate the body is widely practiced (Sanders, 1989).

We know people sometimes react strongly to a particular artifact or decora-

tion. These reactions may be positive, negative, or a mixture of the two depending

on your point of view. For example, lipstick may be used to enhance the redness of

females’lips due to its positive association with greater femininity and attractive-

ness (Stephen & McKeegan, 2010). Due to concerns that jurors would not give a

man accused of murder a fair trial, his lawyer convinced the court to have his

192 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

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client’s offensive tattoos cosmetically covered up during trial, suggesting that auto-

matically negative associations of guilt and criminality are linked to the presence of

specific tattoos. Lastly, Wohlrab, Fink, Kappeler, and Brewer (2009) observed that

tattooed avatars were viewed as more adventure-seeking, less inhibited, and having

more previous sexual partners than their nontattooed counterparts.

Of course, we should not assume that we know for certain how people will

respond to even the most common of personal artifacts. Consider the following ques-

tion: Do people who wear eyeglasses seem more intelligent to us? Surprisingly, given

the frequent depictions of smart but nerdy bespectacled people on TV, the answer to

this question is not clear (Harris, Harris, & Bochner, 1982; Lundberg & Sheehan,

1994; McKelvie, 1997). Furthermore, some of our strong reactions to artifacts may

be only short-lived. Once we have had a chance to interact with a person, our overall

impression of him or her is likely to be based on additional appearance-related

features as well as the verbal and nonverbal behavior that we see from him or her.

FIGURE 6-6

A face temporarily altered with body paint.

Waddell Images/Shutterstock.com

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 193

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SUMMARY

Appearance and dress are part of the total non-

verbal stimuli that influence interpersonal

responses, and under some conditions, they are

the primary determinants of such responses.

Physical attractiveness may be influential in

determining whether a person is sought out,

and it may have a bearing on whether a person

is able to persuade or manipulate others. It is

often an important factor in the selection of

dates and marriage partners, it may determine

whether a defendant is deemed guilty or inno-

cent, and it may even have an effect on whether

a prisoner is able to decrease the antisocial

behavior responsible for his or her imprisonment.

It may be a major factor contributing to how

others judge personality, sexuality, popularity,

success, and often happiness. Fortunately for

some, and unfortunately for others, such judg-

ments begin early in life. Not all children are

conventionally beautiful. There are indications

that teachers not only make attractiveness judg-

ments about young children but also treat the

unattractive ones with fewer and less positive

communications. A sizable proportion of the

American public still thinks of the ideal man or

woman in terms of physical attractiveness.

In spite of the overwhelming evidence that

physical attractiveness is a highly desirable

FIGURE 6-7

People around the world use tattoos to decorate their bodies.

Patrizia Tilly/Shutterstock.com

194 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

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quality in interpersonal situations, other factors

temper these general findings. For instance, all

positive findings for attractiveness are based on

probabilities, not certainty. Many less attractive

people are not evaluated unfavorably. For exam-

ple, judgments can be tempered by who people

are seen with, the environment in which they are

judged, other communicative behavior they

engage in, or the time of life at which they are

evaluated. In addition, many attractiveness

studies have used photographs rather than live,

interacting human beings, and we know that the

dynamics of interaction influence perceptions.

In addition to the importance of general phys-

ical attractiveness in influencing the responses of

others, we have some information on stereotyped

responses to specific features: general body build,

facial appearance, skin color, odor, hair, and

clothes. These specific features may have a

profound influence on a person’s self-image

and hence on patterns of communication with

others.

The way we clothe our bodies may also com-

municate important messages in our work and

social lives, and it is one of the first things people

perceive about us. We can judge age, sex, and

socioeconomic status from clothing with more

accuracy than we can a person’s attitudes or

beliefs. Wearing attire that others perceive as

similar to theirs, appropriate to the situation, or

representative of an expert or authority figure

gives a persuasive element to clothing. We also

know that clothing and the other ways we deco-

rate our bodies—with jewelry, colors, tattoos,

and so on—affect how we feel about ourselves,

which in turn affects how we communicate.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Can our verbal behavior affect the way peo-

ple perceive our physical attractiveness?

What verbal behavior might cause people to

perceive us as less physically attractive?

What verbal behavior might make us appear

more physically attractive? Do the answers

to these questions vary with context? If so,

give examples.

2. Do you know romantic couples in which the

female is significantly less attractive than

the male? If so, develop photos that reflect

this difference, and ask people what it is

about the female that the male is likely

attracted to?

3. Do we see physical attractiveness differently

in photos and videos with no sound? Do

your own experiment: Obtain ratings of the

physical attractiveness of people in photos

and the same people shown interacting.

They should all interact with the same person

and talk about the same subject. How do you

explain the differences or the absence of

differences?

4. People have been refused employment or

fired from their jobs because of perceived

problems with their height, weight, odor,

skin color, clothing, hair, or general attrac-

tiveness. Under what conditions if any do

you think such characteristics are legitimate

reasons for not hiring a person or for firing

an employee?

5. Do you think a person can be physically

attractive in one situation but not in another?

Test this idea with both males and females by

showing photos of the same people in differ-

ent situations.

CHAPTER 6THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 195

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THE COMMUNICATORS’

BEHAVIOR

[PART IV ]

Most of our nonverbal behavior involves change or movement. We exhibit different

gestures, postures, and body movements during an encounter; sometimes we touch

others, and sometimes we do not. Our face, eyes, and voice also are displayed in

various patterns. Part IV examines these behaviors individually, but in everyday

conversation, these signals work in concert with one another to communicate

various messages. The ways various nonverbal signals work together is the subject

of Part V.

197

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THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE

ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION

[CHAPTER7]

Sapir’s view, quoted above, aptly characterized the prevailing view of gestures

during the first part of the 20th century. If he were alive today, his assessment

would no doubt be somewhat different. Spoken language and gestures are commonly

acknowledged as building blocks of human interaction, both in informal conversa-

tion and in more formal public discourse. But unlike language, gestures received rela-

tively little scholarly attention until the last part of the 20th century. Kendon (1981a)

identified only six scholarly books on gesture published between 1900 and 1979 in

the English language. Now, however, gestures are carefully scrutinized by scholars

from around the world, and the academic journal Gesture, specifically devoted to

gesture research, was launched in 2001. As a result, our knowledge of how people

use and respond to gestures has greatly increased.

Even though gestures are the primary focus of this chapter, it should be noted

that the way people walk and their posture may also play an important role in

communicating information to themselves and others. Several studies have shown

that various emotions such as sadness, anger, and happiness can be accurately iden-

tified by a person’s gait (Janssen et al., 2008; Montepare, Goldstein, & Clausen,

1987; Montepare & Zebrowitz, 1993; Montepare & Zebrowitz-McArthur, 1988).

The amount of arm swing, stride length, heavy-footedness, and walking speed play

a central role in these perceptions. Carney, Cuddy, and Yap (2010) showed that a

state of greater dominance (e.g., elevated testosterone levels, increased feelings of

power) was induced in those who assumed a high-power (open and expansive) pos-

ture compared to those who assumed a low-power (closed and contractive) posture.

We respond to gestures with an extreme alertness and, one might say, in

accordance with an elaborate and secret code that is written nowhere, known

by none, and understood by all.

—Edward Sapir

199

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Here, postural cues likely informed that person how he or she should feel—more

versus less powerful or in control—with biological and psychological changes

occurring that were in keeping with each felt state. We also derive information

from observing another person’s posture. For example, Hadjikhani and de Gelder

(2003) found that perceptions of fear communicated solely by a person’s body,

with the expressor’s facial features blurred, activated the same areas of a perceiver’s

brain that are activated when responding to facial expressions of emotion. And

Gilbert, Martin, and Coulson (2011) demonstrated that people can identify an

angry body posture more quickly than a happy body posture located in a neutral

crowd. This finding pertaining to postural cues is in line with other research show-

ing that we have an attentional bias for threatening nonverbal cues, such as angry

faces and insulting gestures (Flaisch, Hacker, Renner, & Schupp, 2011; Hansen &

Hansen, 1988).

Typically, gestures are thought of as arm and hand movements, but head ges-

tures are also well known. In fact, some head gestures seem to transcend culture

and language. In some studies, Arabic, Bulgarian, Korean, and African-American

speakers all used lateral head movements to accompany expressions of inclusivity,

changed their head position for each item on a list, oriented their head toward a

specific location when referring to absent or abstract entities, and used head nods

to elicit active listening nods from their listeners (McClave, 2000; McClave, Kim,

Tamer, & Mileff, 2007). Nevertheless, as you will soon discover, culture matters

with respect to the use and interpretation of gestures. Kita (2009) has identified

four cultural factors linked to such differences in gestures, including the meaning

ascribed to emblems, which we discuss shortly, as well as how language is used to

express spatial information. Normally gestures are produced without bodily touch,

but touching does occur. For example, a pointing gesture may touch the speaker’s

own body or that of the listener. The movements involved while actually perform-

ing tasks such as grooming, smoking, eating, drawing, or hammering a nail are not

considered gestures, but arm and hand movements that allude to and represent the

performance of such behaviors are definitely considered gestures. In fact, people

whose daily work involves a variety of manual manipulations, like the work of a

car mechanic, may develop a gestural repertoire that emanates from this work

(Streeck, 2002).

Gestures perform many intrapersonal and interpersonal functions. One way of

thinking about this is to ask the question, “Who benefits from gestures, the person

doing the gesturing or the person being gestured to during an interaction?”The

answer is both. However, who benefits the most in any given interaction depends

on a variety of factors. For example, gestures help speakers retrieve certain words

or describe objects that move as part of their function, and thus serve a greater

intrapersonal function. Listeners may benefit more from a speaker’s gestures when

these gestures add emphasis or clarity to speech, help characterize and make mem-

orable the content of speech, and act as forecasters of forthcoming speech; such

gestures serve a greater interpersonal function. Hostetter (2011) reviewed a number

of studies and concluded that the speaker’s gestures do enhance a listener’s compre-

hension of the message, especially when a gesture is not redundant with the speech

or the person being gestured to is a child as opposed to an adult. Hostetter also

found that abstract ideas are harder to communicate via gestures. Of course, we

200 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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must recognize that gestures are going to be equally important to both interactants

at times, such as when they regulate the flow and rhythm of an interaction between

the two people. One example would be gestures that communicate the following:

“I’m done talking; it’s your turn.”

Many types of gestures are commonly employed in everyday interaction, and

these gestures have been categorized in many ways (McNeill, 2000; Morris, 1977,

1994; Kendon, 2004). This chapter uses a classification system based on the extent

to which a gesture is dependent on speech for its meaning. This is a useful dis-

tinction, and we can learn a lot about gestures by classifying them as either speech

independent or speech dependent. At the same time, it is important to recognize the

difficulties in neatly categorizing a behavior which, on the surface, may seem rela-

tively uncomplicated. Take, for example, the head shake (Kendon, 2002). Sometimes

we use the head shake as a speech-independent gesture meaning “no,”although a

side-to-side head wobble in parts of India and Bulgaria means just the opposite.

And while a “no”meaning can be communicated without speech, sometimes people

will say “no”during the shake. The meaning of the shake has a greater dependence

on the accompanying speech when it is used to signal disapproval or doubt, which

may occur while saying “Well, I guess I could talk to her ….”In addition, the head

shake also accompanies statements to underscore intensity or impossibility, as in

“You just wouldn’t believe how buff he was.”The head shake, like all the gestures

discussed in this chapter, can be used and interpreted in different ways, depending

on the way it is enacted and the context in which it occurs. With this in mind, let us

examine those gestures that are less dependent on speech for their meaning.

SPEECH-INDEPENDENT GESTURES

Speech-independent gestures are also known as emblems (Ekman, 1976, 1977) or

autonomous gestures (Kendon, 1984, 1989a,b). They are nonverbal acts that have

a direct verbal translation or dictionary definition, usually consisting of a word or

two or a phrase. There is high agreement among members of a culture or subcul-

ture on the verbal translation of these signals. These gestures are the least depen-

dent on speech for their meaning and most commonly occur as a single gesture.

The “ring gesture”in Figure 7-1 is an example of a speech-independent gesture

found in several cultures (see “Decoding Decisions”).

Children are able to decode some of these speech-independent gestures by the

time they are 3 years old, and this ability increases dramatically by age 5 (Kumin &

Lazar, 1974; Michael & Willis, 1968, 1969). In one study, 4-year-olds of both

sexes accurately decoded the emblems for “yes,”“no,”“come here,”“quiet,”

“good-bye,”“two,”“I won’t listen,”“blowing a kiss,”“I’m going to sleep,”and

“I won’t do it.”But none of the 4-year-olds was able to accurately decode “crazy.”

Generally, children at this age understand and decode accurately more speech-

independent gestures than they actually use in their own interactions. Yet, with

prompting and support by caregivers, babies who have not learned to talk can effec-

tively use between 10 and 60 communicative signs (Acredolo & Goodwyn, 1996).

Adult awareness of speech-independent gestures is about the same as that of

word choice. It is a behavior we are usually very conscious of enacting. These ges-

tures often are produced with the hand, but not exclusively. A nose wrinkle may

CHAPTER 7THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 201

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say “I’m disgusted!”or “Phew! It stinks!”To say “I don’t know,”“I’m helpless,”

or “I’m uncertain,”we might turn both palms up, shrug the shoulders, or do both

simultaneously. Ekman believes that facial emblems differ from facial expressions

of emotion in two ways: They are more stylized; and they are enacted for either a

longer or shorter duration than the emotional expression. When people talk about

their experiences, they may portray certain feelings emblematically by selecting and

emphasizing a single feature of a multifeatured facial expression of emotion. Exam-

ples include smiling to indicate happiness, and mechanically dropping the jaw or

dramatically raising the eyebrows to indicate surprise.

In some cultures, speech-independent gestures are strung together to form a

sequential message, but this is unusual in the United States. But it could happen if

you were on the phone when a visitor enters your office and you needed to indicate

the following in succession: “Wait a minute,”“come in,”and “sit down.”Sometimes

an entire system of speech-independent gestures develops, such as with underwater

divers, umpires, and television directors. Even though these gestures form a system of

signals related to performing a specific task, such systems can grow beyond the bound-

aries of those tasks. In the sawmills of British Columbia, for example, the noise level

made spoken communication very difficult. A system of task-related gestures devel-

oped that eventually came to include messages not associated with the tasks of the

sawmill (Meissner & Philpott, 1975). Gesture systems not limited to a specific task

are known as sign languages. Sign language is commonly thought of as a form of

communication for the hearing impaired, but sign languages also develop in other

contexts. Examples include religious orders in which vows of silence are taken as well

as social situations in which some are forbidden to speak to others, such as has been

reported for Armenian wives in the presence of their husbands (Kendon, 1983).

Speech-independent gestures may be used when verbal channels are blocked or

fail, but they also are used during verbal interaction. A person may be telling the

story of another person’s strange behavior and may conclude by making a gesture

FIGURE 7-1

The ring gesture signifies “A-okay”or “good”in the United States as a speech-independent

gesture. It may stand for “zero”or “worthless”in other cultural contexts.

theprint/istockphoto.com

202 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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that communicates “he’s crazy.”In this case, the circular gesture at the side of the

head is a substitute for the statement. This gesture also could be used to complete an

utterance: “If you ask me, I think ….”In this case, the verbalizations are redundant

and unnecessary for understanding the message being communicated. In this example,

the speech-independent gesture occurred at the end of a speaker’sturn,butothersmay

occur at the beginning. Ekman’s study of the “shrug”emblem finds that it occurs most

often at the beginning of a speaker’s turn (see Figure 7-2). Listeners may also use

speech-independent gestures to comment on or qualify what the speaker is saying.

“Yes”and “no”gestures are common listener responses during another’s speech.

Thus, even though speech-independent gestures can communicate messages

without attendant speech, their meanings are still influenced by context. Giving

someone “the finger”can be humorous or insulting, depending on who performs

DECODING DECISIONS

How would you interpret these gestures? As

discussed already, there is generally high agree-

ment about the verbal meaning of speech-

independent gestures in a culture. Nevertheless,

even within a culture, there may be uncertainty

regarding the meaning of such gestures. Contex-

tual, regional, and ethnic background factors may

alter the emotional valence or verbal translation

of them. In the picture on the left, the “L”shape

near the forehead means “loser”in the United States. As a college student, you probably know that someone

might do that in jest if the goal is to playfully tease another person about not succeeding at something he or she

should have. It also might be a display of derision about another person’s lack of success or low station in life.

As reported in the news in 2006, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia cupped a hand under his chin

and flicked his fingers out in response to a question about his critics. This speech-independent gesture is

shown in the picture on the right. For the Italian Scalia, this was meant to signal that these critics were not

worthy of his consideration. For others who were present, though, Scalia was signaling that he would say

“f**k off”to them. If you had to rule on this one, what decoding decision would you have made?

Scott Griessel/Photos.com

Boston Herald

CHAPTER 7THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 203

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it, who the target is, and what other behaviors accompany it. Facial expressions

and eye movement accompanying speech-independent gestures are likely to expand

the range of possible meanings associated with a hand gesture. And it is always

possible that the meaning associated with a gesture in the absence of speech will

be modified if it is accompanied by speech, including those occasions when the

accompanying speech is seemingly redundant. Some of these emblematic gestures

are specifically adapted to particular subgroups within a given culture. In the

United States, for example, the finger-wag gesture indicating “no-no”is used pri-

marily when adults are addressing children; the “shame on you”gesture seems lim-

ited to usage by children (see Figure 7-3).

Sherzer’s (1974) detailed work on the pointed-lip gesture used by the San

Blas Cuna of Panama and the thumbs-up gesture used by urban Brazilians illustrates

how gestures may have a general meaning that is modified by context. For example,

the thumbs-up gesture has a general meaning of “good”or “positive”(see Figure 7-4).

Context, however, expands the range of its meanings. It can be used to indicate

understanding the point of what someone said or did; to acknowledge a favor granted;

to greet someone; to indicate knowledge of the next move in an interactional sequence

and who is going to perform it; to request permission to carry out an action, as when a

customer signals a waiter about the availability of a table; and as a sexual insult.

Sometimes the context does not affect the meaning so much as the slight

changes in the way the gesture is performed. When the forefinger is extended, with

the rest of the hand in a fist, and is held motionless about 12 inches in front of

one’s chest, the meaning is “wait a minute.”When the finger repeatedly moves up

FIGURE 7-2

The shrug gesture.

Richard Hutchings/Photo Researchers

204 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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and down, the meaning shifts to one of emphasis or reprimand. When the same

finger and hand are put perpendicularly in front of the lips, it means “be quiet.”

There are published lists of emblematic gestures for cultures around the

world (Armstrong & Wagner, 2003; Axtell, 1991; Barakat, 1973; Creider, 1977;

Johnson, Ekman, & Friesen, 1975; Morris, Collett, Marsh, & O’Shaughnessy, 1979;

Poggi, 2002; Saitz & Cervenka, 1972; Sparhawk, 1978; Trupin, 1976; Wylie,

1977). Kendon’s (1981b) analysis of over 800 emblematic gestures contained in

some of these lists revealed three broad categories of meaning that accounted for

80 percent of the speech-independent gestures observed in the United States,

FIGURE 7-3

Finger emblems used in the United States for “no”(left) and “shame on you”(right).

FIGURE 7-4

The thumbs-up gesture by 2008 presidential candidate John McCain.

Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo

CHAPTER 7THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 205

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Colombia, France, southern Italy, and Kenya and 66 percent of those found in Iran.

These categories were (1) interpersonal control, (2) announcement of one’scurrentstate

or condition, and (3) an evaluative response to the actions or appearance of another.

Ekman’sstudiesoffiveculturesindicatethateach has emblematic gestures for greeting

and departing, replying, directing locomotion (all forms of interpersonal control), insult-

ing or evaluating another’sactionsorappearance,referringtoaperson’sphysicaland

affective state, or announcing a person’scurrentconditionorstate.Asyet,nospeech-

independent gestures have been found that are made the same and have the same mean-

ing in every culture studied. Future research may identify some, however. The most

likely candidates are gestures having to do with affirmation and negation; stopping; not

knowing; and sleeping, eating, and drinking (i.e., functions all human beings share).

Far more common are examples of gestures of similar form that differ in meaning

from culture to culture. From 1877 through 1878, Bulgaria and Russia combined

forces to fight Turkey. The alliance discovered a real problem in that the Russian way

of saying “no”was to shake the head from side to side, but a very similar Bulgarian

gesture, a head sway or wobble, meant “yes”(Jacobson, 1972). The ring gesture,

with the thumb and forefinger touching to make a circle (see Figure 7-1), indicates

“you’re worth zero”in France and Belgium; “money”in Japan; “asshole”in parts of

southern Italy; and in Greece and Turkey, it is an insulting or vulgar sexual invitation.

Of course, to many U.S. residents, it means “A-okay.”Things certainly would not be

“A-okay”if the ring gesture was used in cultures that attach other meanings to it.

The thumb signals the number 1 for Germans, whereas it does not for French or

English Canadians (Pika, Nicoladis, & Marentette, 2009). The thumbs-up gesture

pictured in Figure 7-4 is usually decoded as positive, meaning “good”or “okay”in

the United States, but in the Middle East, it is an obscene gesture. The thumb

inserted between the index and middle fingers—the “fig”gesture—is an invitation

to have sex in Germany, Holland, and Denmark but is a wish for good luck or pro-

tection in Portugal and Brazil (see Figure 7-5). During World War II, Winston

Churchill made the “V for victory”gesture world famous, and it continues to mean

“victory”in some cultures. But if the palm is facing toward the performer, it is a sex-

ual insult in Great Britain—a meaning former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

learned the hard way, when she essentially said “screw you”to a crowd of people,

thinking she was giving a sign of victory. In the United States, the British meaning

of sexual insult is not associated with the “V”sign facing inward; it simply means

“two.”Nor is there any distinction the other way—with the palm facing outward—

between the “V”for victory and the “V”for peace, a meaning that gained popular-

ity during the anti–Vietnam War protests of the 1960s (see Figure 7-6).

FIGURE 7-5

The “fig”gesture.

Rights Reserved

206 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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b

c

FIGURE 7-6

(a) “V”gesture used as an insult in Britain and (b) illustrated by Winston Churchill. (c) Richard

Nixon makes the “V for victory”gesture at the 1968 Republican Convention in Miami.

(d) People at an anti-Persian Gulf War demonstration in Washington, DC, using the “V”

gesture to signify “peace.”

Bettmann/CORBIS

CHAPTER 7THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 207

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The vertical horn sign pictured in Figure 7-7 is normally decoded “cuckold”in

Portugal, Spain, Italy, and places in Central and South America (“cuckold”mean-

ing a man whose wife has cheated on him). Students from cultures in which this

gesture indicates “your wife has been unfaithful to you, and you are either too stu-

pid to know it or not man enough to satisfy her”would indeed be surprised if they

were to attend the University of Texas. Here, and throughout Texas, the horn sign

is used to show identification with the university and represents school spirit. It is

modeled after longhorn cattle and literally represents the University of Texas

Longhorns. Consider the reaction of people who associate the sign with “cuckold”

viewing a University of Texas football game with 85,000 fans making the sign

vigorously, repeatedly, and in unison! Another sign that is similar, but has

the thumb thrust out instead of tucked in, is decoded by many people around the

world as “I love you.”The origin of this sign is in the American Sign Language

(ASL) finger spelling used by deaf communicators.

Many autonomous gestures have no equivalent in other cultures. In France, for

example, one can signal drunkenness by making a fist around the nose and twist-

ing. Many messages have different gestural forms from culture to culture. Notice

how the gestures for suicide in Figure 7-8 reflect the most common methods of

suicide in each culture. The number of speech-independent gestures used within a

culture may vary considerably, from fewer than 100 in the United States to more

than 250 identified with Israeli students.

d

FIGURE 7-6 (continued)

Bill Greenblatt/Stringer/Getty Images

208 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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c

FIGURE 7-7

(a) The vertical horn gesture. (b) The “I love you”sign. (c) University of Texas football player,

Colt McCoy, gives the school’s“Hook ’em Horns”gesture. (d) Miss America 1995, Heather

Whitestore, a former Miss Alabama, walks down the runway and signs “I love you”to the

crowd after winning the 74th annual pageant in Atlantic City. (e) The double horn gesture in

Naples means “cuckolded.”

Matt Slocum/AP Photo

CHAPTER 7THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 209

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One of the problems in comparing studies of speech-independent gestures

across cultures is the lack of a uniform method for identifying them. Johnson,

Ekman, and Friesen’s (1975) study of American emblematic gestures offered a sys-

tematic procedure that other researchers may want to use. The authors asked mem-

bers of a particular group or culture to produce emblems associated with a list of

verbal statements and phrases. They reported that after about 10 or 15 informants

had been tested, a great majority of the emblems had been identified. To qualify as

a“verified”emblem, at least 70 percent of the encoders must have performed the

action in a similar way. The emblems similarly encoded were then presented to a

group of decoders, who were asked to identify the meaning of the gestures and the

extent to which they reflect natural usage in everyday conversation. Gestures used

primarily for games like charades normally were not considered “natural.”

Inventions and performances that require speech were also eliminated. At least

70 percent of the decoders also had to match the encoder’s meaning and judge the

gesture to be used naturally in everyday communication situations. The index fin-

ger pointed at the head can mean “smart”or “stupid”depending on the context,

but if 70 percent of those in a given community say it means “stupid”without

accompanying contextual information, then this is considered a verified emblem

d

e

FIGURE 7-7 (continued)

Tom Costello/AP Photo

2010 PsychoTex/Kevin E. White

210 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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for “stupid”among this group. It does not, however, prevent context from chang-

ing the meaning.

SPEECH-RELATED GESTURES

Speech-related gestures, sometimes called illustrators or co-speech gestures,are

directly tied to or accompany speech. The meanings and functions of these

gestures are revealed as we examine how they relate to the attendant spoken

language. Attempts to classify the various types of speech-related gestures have

used different terminology (Efron, 1941, 1972; Ekman, 1977; Kendon, 1989a,b;

McNeill, 1992, 2000; Streeck & Knapp, 1992), but four common types have

emerged:

1. Gestures related to the speaker’s referent, concrete or abstract

2. Gestures indicating the speaker’s relationship to the referent

3. Gestures that act as visual punctuation for the speaker’s discourse

4. Gestures that assist in the regulation and organization of the spoken

dialogue between two interactants

FIGURE 7-8

Cultural variations in suicide gestures: the South Fore, Papua New Guinea (top left); Japan

(bottom); the United States (top right).

CHAPTER 7THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 211

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REFERENT-RELATED GESTURES

As we talk, we use gestures to characterize the content of our speech. Sometimes

these movements depict fairly concrete referents, whereas other times, vague and

abstract ideas.

Pointing movements, for instance, can help indicate a specific person, place, or

thing being discussed. In toddlers, the pointing may involve the whole hand or only

the index finger depending on what the child is attempting to communicate (Cochet

& Vauclair, 2010). The referent may be in the immediate conversational environ-

ment or may be more distant, as is the case when an adult says, “And where did

you come from before that?”while pointing his or her finger in the direction of the

referred-to place. Gestures that draw the referent’s shape or movement, and ges-

tures that depict spatial relationships, can be used to help a listener visualize fea-

tures associated with concrete referents. When you say, “I had to bend the branch

way back”or “she was eating her food like an animal”while illustrating how these

events occurred, the gesture bears a close relationship to the concrete semantic con-

tent of your speech. When referent-related gestures outline the referent by drawing

a picture in space, such as making an hourglass figure to signify a shapely woman,

it may be asked whether this is truly speech related. The test for determining

whether such a picture may be speech independent is if 70 percent of the members

of the usage community respond with “shapely woman”when shown the gesture

portrayal without any speech context.

More abstract referents are characterized when we sketch the path or direc-

tion of an idea in the air, when we make a series of circular movements with the

hand or arm to suggest we mean more than the specific words used, and when

we use expansion and contraction gestures such as those of an accordion player

to indicate the breadth of the subject being discussed. Sometimes we represent

abstract content via gestural metaphors. For example, cup-shaped gestures in the

following sample of discourse (McNeill, 1985) represent containers of what could

be supposed. When they spread apart, they seem to convey the idea that anything is

possible, and their sudden disappearance suggests that what might have been did

not happen:

“Even though one might [both hands form cups and spread wide apart] have supposed

[cups vanish abruptly]….”

Thus far the focus has been on the speech-related referents of our gestures.

However, we also gesture when we are trying to solve a problem in silence. These

co-thought gestures reflect our internal thought processes and are not necessarily

intended to communicate information to others. Chu and Kita (2011) found that

when participants were experiencing difficulties in solving a spatial-visualization

problem, such as a mental rotation task, their co-thought gestures went up, and

that these gestures eventually helped them to solve more problems.

GESTURES INDICATING A SPEAKER’SRELATIONSHIP TO THE REFERENT

These gestures comment on the speaker’s orientation to the referent rather than char-

acterizing the nature of the thing being talked about. The positioning of the palms

can show quite different orientations toward one’s own message (see Figure 7-9).

212 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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For example, palms up show more uncertainty (“I think”or “I’m not sure”), palms

down show certainty (“clearly”or “absolutely”), palms out and facing the listener

show assertion (“Let me say this”or “Calm down”), and palms facing the speaker

allude to embracing a concept (“I’ve got this great idea …”). Palm positions can have

other speech-related associations, such as a speaker’s palms-up gesture when pleading,

begging, or even anticipating closeness in greetings.

Oscillating hand movements suggest that a speaker is unsure or could go either

way. Charles de Gaulle, former president of France, was noted for his grasping

gesture, which many felt signified his desire to control the subject under discussion

(see Figure 7-10).

FIGURE 7-9

Palm gestures.

FIGURE 7-10

Former French President Charles de Gaulle’s characteristic gesture, perceived by many as “grasping

for control of an idea.”

Reserved

AP Photo/Jean Jacques Levy

CHAPTER 7THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 213

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PUNCTUATION GESTURES

Punctuation gestures accent, emphasize, and organize important segments of the

discourse. Such a segment may be a single word or a larger utterance unit, such as

a summary or a new theme. When these gestures are used to emphasize a particular

word or phrase, they often coincide with the primary voice stress. Punctuation

gestures can also organize the stream of speech into units. When we speak of a

series of things, we may communicate discreteness by rhythmic chopping hand ges-

tures, for example, “We must consider A (gesture), B (gesture), and C (gesture).”

Sometimes a single chopping gesture after C indicates C will be considered sepa-

rately, or it may mean that A, B, and C will be considered as a group. A slight

downward movement of the head may accompany the hand gestures. Pounding

the hand or fist in the air or on another object also acts as a device for adding

emphasis and visually underlining a particular point being made (see Figure 7-11).

Punctuation can, of course, be accomplished with body movements other than

the hands. The “eye flash”(not the “eyebrow flash”discussed in Chapters 2 and

10) is one such display (Bull & Connelly, 1985; Walker & Trimboli, 1983). The

momentary widening of a speaker’s eyelids, without involving the eyebrows, has

been found to occur most often in conjunction with spoken adjectives and is used

for emphasis.

INTERACTIVE GESTURES

Thus far, the gesture categories discussed have focused on the content of the speaker’s

monologue. Interactive gestures acknowledge the other interactant relative to the

speaker and help regulate and organize the dialogue itself. Because they are directed

at the ongoing involvement and shared roles oftheinteractants,thesegesturesoccur

only in the presence of others. The main function of interactive gestures, then, is to

include the interaction partner in the dialogue. This is usually done through some

form of pointing gesture in the partner’s direction.

Bavelas (1994) and her colleagues (Bavelas, Chovil, Coates, & Roe, 1995;

Bavelas, Chovil, Lawrie, & Wade, 1992) identified four different types of interac-

tive gestures and the functions they serve.

FIGURE 7-11

Punctuation gestures.

Reserved

214 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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1. The speaker and the person spoken to are in the process of exchanging

information so it is natural that this relationship be acknowledged with several

types of gestures that acknowledge the delivery of information. These are

called delivery gestures. These gestures may refer to the delivery of new infor-

mation as in the gestures accompanying “Here’s my point”in Figure 7-12.

They may also accompany information that the speaker thinks the addressee

already knows with the meaning, “As you know …” Other forms of delivery

gestures are also interpreted by the addressee as asides (e.g., “Oh, and by the

way …) or an indication that the speaker is asking the addressee to extra-

polate additional information not given as in “or whatever.”

a. General delivery: “Here’s my point.”

c. Seeking help: “What’s the word . . . ?”

b. Citing: “As you said earlier . . .”

d. Giving turn: “You go ahead.”

FIGURE 7-12

Interactive gestures.

CHAPTER 7THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 215

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2. Several types of speaker gestures refer to a previous comment made by

the addressee. These are called citing gestures with one type illustrated in

Figure 7-12 when the speaker says, “As you said earlier ….”Citing gestures

also acknowledge an addressee’s response to a speaker and essentially mean

“I see that you understood me.”

3. Some interactive gestures are designed to seek a specific response and are appro-

priately called seeking gestures. For example, in Figure 7-12 the speaker’s ges-

ture is seeking help in identifying a word or phrase he or she wants to use. The

“thinking face”is a facial gesture that may also elicit participation from one or

more addressees in a speaker’s word or idea search. Sometimes, however, the

speaker is seeking agreement from the addressee rather than help and the gesture

means, “Do you agree?”Gestures that query the addressee’s understanding are

the verbal equivalent of “ya know?”at the end of a unit of talk. While seeking

gestures invite responses from an audience, the Goodwins point out that self-

touching contributes to a state of conversational disengagement or the opposite

of inclusion (Goodwin, 1986; Goodwin & Goodwin, 1986).

4. Turn gestures, as noted in more detail in Chapter 12, occur during the

exchange of speaking turns. This may signal “you go ahead and talk”as illus-

trated in Figure 7-12, but turn gestures may also accompany the taking of a

turn or an awkward transition when no one is assuming the turn at talk.

Although the preceding fourfold classification of speech-related gestures is useful for

understanding how gestures and speech work together, some gestures may not be limited

to a single function. For example, a speaker’srelationshipwiththereferentmaybehighly

intense. Some of the gestural displays illuminating this relationship, however, may also

emphasize or punctuate certain specific message units. Nevertheless, we must recognize

that different types of speech-related gestures exist that may serve different functions for

the parties involved. Efron’s(1941,1972)cross-culturalcomparisonshowshowhelpful

gestural distinctions can be. He found that assouthernItalianstalked,theymadeexten-

sive use of gestures that had a close resemblance to their referent (e.g., pictorial),

whereas eastern European Jews made very littleuseofsuchgestures.Itseemsreasonable

that different cultures value different kinds of information, and gestures vary accord-

ingly. Even the number of gestures in all categories may vary from culture to culture.

GESTURE FREQUENCY

The frequency of gesturing can be influenced by several key factors.

1. We would expect to find more gestures in face-to-face communication and when

the speaker expects the recipient will see his or her message (Alibali & Don,

2001; Bavelas, Kenwood, Johnson, & Phillips, 2002; Cohen, 1977; Cohen &

Harrison, 1973). We do, of course, use some gestures when our listeners cannot

see us, for example, when talking on a cell phone (see Figure 7-13). We may do

so because the gesturing helps us retrieve a particular word from our mental

lexicon or describe an object (Hadar, 1989; Pine, Gurney, & Fletcher, 2010).

Continued communication without visible contact, however, may reduce the

number of gestures we use in general.

2. Gestures are also likely to increase when a speaker is enthusiastic and involved

in the topic being discussed.

216 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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3. We would expect speakers concerned about their listeners’comprehension of

their messages to use more gestures, too—especially in difficult or complex

communicative situations, as when the listener is perceived as not paying

attention, the listener is not comprehending, or the speaker cannot find

the right words to express an idea (Bavelas, Coates, & Johnson, 2002;

Goldin-Meadow, 2003; Holler & Beattie, 2003). Even though exposure to

gestures that accompany speech may often facilitate more accurate decoding

on the part of the listener, there are some occasions when the contribution is

negligible (Krauss, Dushay, Chen, & Rauscher, 1995).

4. Speakers trying to dominate conversations would be expected to use more

speech-related gestures.

5. Speech content also plays a role in the number of gestures used. When

answering questions about manual activities—such as “Explain how to change

a car or bicycle tire,”or “Explain how to wrap a box for a present”—we

would expect more gestures than when answering questions about visual or

abstract images (Feyereisen & Havard, 1999).

6. A communicator’s cognitive abilities can affect gesture production. In one

study, the rate of gesturing by speakers with a combination of low phonemic

fluency and high spatial skill was especially high (Hostetter & Alibali, 2007).

7. Cultural background is related to gesture frequency. Americans, for instance,

gesture more than do the Chinese when telling stories (So, 2010).

FIGURE 7-13

Gesture made while speaking on the telephone.

Creatas/JupiterImages

CHAPTER 7THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 217

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8. When people share information that has been learned verbally and visually,

they use more representational gestures compared to when they learn this

information only verbally (Hostetter & Skirving, 2011). Thus, having a mental

image of the to-be-shared information may facilitate gesturing.

As we note in the next section, speech and gesture are intimately linked, and

it would be hard for anyone to abstain completely from gesturing while speaking

for very long. Even if it were possible, it would be ill advised, because gestures

play an important role in communication and cognition. An experiment reported

in a 1931 Soviet publication asked subjects to talk while inhibiting all gestures of

the head, hands, face, and body. It is reported that no one was able to carry out

the instructions completely, and “the speech …lost its intonation, stress and

expressiveness; even the very selection of words needed for the expression of

content became labored; there was a jerkiness to the speech, and a reduction of

the number of words used”(Dobrogaev, 1931). Without gestures, speakers also

would have to increase the number of phrases and words used to describe spatial

relations and would probably pause more often (Graham & Heywood, 1976).

Rimé (1982) found speakers’fluency to be adversely affected when their gestures

were restricted. Lastly, adults and children enjoy certain cognitive and memory

benefits from gesturing; for example, gesturing can help children learn a new

concept, recall information they had previously learned, and verbally report

more details of a story they are not familiar with (Cameron & Xu, 2011; Cook,

Mitchell, & Goldin-Meadow, 2008; Cook, Yip, & Goldin-Meadow, 2010; Ping

& Goldin-Meadow, 2010; Stevanoni & Salmon, 2005). Listeners are also likely

to experience a serious loss from not seeing gestures because gestures, like

speech, are listener adapted (Beattie & Shovelton, 2006; de Ruiter, 2007). For

example, when a speaker talks to others who have experienced the event the

speaker is talking about, the speaker’s gestures are smaller and less precise than

when the same event is communicated to people who have not experienced the

event (Gerwing & Bavelas, 2004). Since gestures are listener adapted, it is no

surprise that they often facilitate comprehension and help listeners access linguis-

tic cues in their memory (Berger & Popelka, 1971; Church, Garber, & Rogalski,

2007; Rogers, 1978; Woodall & Folger, 1981). Actually, a more accurate state-

ment is that gestures synchronized with and supporting the vocal/verbal stream

increase comprehension. This is accomplished through the functions we have

outlined by vivifying ideas, intensifying points, maintaining listener attention

and focus, and marking the organizational structure of the discourse. Gestures

out of synchrony with the vocal/verbal stream are distracting and interfere with

listener comprehension (Woodall & Burgoon, 1981). Experiments conducted by

Krauss and his colleagues (Kraus et al., 1995; Krauss, Chen, & Chawla, 1996)

argue that gestures may not be aiding listener comprehension by contributing

semantic information. Instead, they say, speech-related gestures are more likely to

aid listener comprehension by getting attention, activatingimagesormotoric

representations in the listener’s mind, and aiding recall. Moreover, Pine and her

colleagues (2010) would argue that some gestures are bound to the semantic prop-

erties of specific words, and thus do not depend on the presence of a listener. They

found that participants gestured more when describing objects that are more

manipulable (e.g., scissors) versus less manipulable (e.g., a rug), and that this did

218 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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not depend on whether they could see the person they were describing the object

to in the study. Simply put, if physical manipulation is part of the semantic prop-

erties of a word, then speakers are more likely to gesture when describing it.

THE COORDINATION OF GESTURE, POSTURE, AND SPEECH

Earlier we said that speech-related gestures are tied to, or accompany, speech. That

they are connected to speech is easily understood, but the exact nature of that con-

nection is more difficult to understand. Most scholars agree that body movements

and gestures are not randomly produced during the stream of speech but are inex-

tricably linked as parts of the same system. The disagreements among scholars in

this area focus on how to define coordination, or synchrony, of speech and move-

ment. Must two things happen at exactly the same time to be in sync? Must they

happen for the same length of time? If speech and gesture are closely coordinated,

does the same part of the brain control both systems? Is there a synchrony of

speech and movement between two speakers, as well as within the behavior of a

single speaker? This section focuses on the research on these issues. The first part

addresses the coordination of a single speaker’s speech and movement, and the sec-

ond examines the coordination of two speakers’behavior.

SELF-SYNCHRONY

In the early 1960s, William S. Condon began a microscopic analysis of the coordi-

nation between movement and speech. By examining individual frames of a

16-millimeter film, he was able to match body movements with a speech transcript.

This allowed him to observe speech–body orientation accurate to l/24th of a sec-

ond. Condon (1976) and Condon and Ogston (1966) showed that speech and

movement are rhythmically coordinated even at the most microscopic levels, for

example, in syllables and even smaller sections. This means a change in one behav-

ior, such as the movement of a body part, will coincide or be coordinated with the

onset of change in another behavior, such as in a phonological segment, or in some

other body part. Just as speech units can be grouped together to form larger units,

so can movement units. A sweep of the arm or a turn of the head may occur over

an entire phrase of several words, but we may see movements of the face and fin-

gers coordinated with smaller units of speech. At every level, however, the phrases

of speech production and the phrases of movement seem closely coordinated. Using

digital video annotation, Loehr (2007) examined the rhythmic relationship between

the hands, head, and voice of four speakers during spontaneous interaction. He,

too, found a complex process of self-synchrony. Stressed syllables often aligned

with gestural strokes and even eye blinks.

The smallest idea unit in spoken language is called the phonemic clause. This

group of words, averaging about five in length, has only one primary stress—

indicated by changes in pitch, rhythm, or loudness—and is terminated by a juncture.

This unit commonly has shown systematic relationships to body movements. Slight

jerks of the head or hand often accompany the primary stress points in the speech

of American English speakers. Gestures also seem to peak at the most salient part of

the idea unit. At the junctures or boundaries, we also find movements of the head or

hands that indicate completion or initiation.

CHAPTER 7THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 219

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Birdwhistell’s (1966) analysis of nonverbal activity that accompanies verbal

behavior led him to postulate the existence of what he calls kinesic markers. These

nonverbal behaviors mark a specific oral language behavior. Markers seem to operate

at several different levels. For instance, we might see an eye blink at the beginning and

end of some words, or a microlateral head sweep may be seen during the expression of

a compound word we would hyphenate in the written form. Figure 7-14 shows head,

hand, and eyelid markers occurring at the end of statements and questions. Similarly,

after making a point, speakers may turn the head to one side or tilt, flex, or extend the

neck, signaling the transition to another point.

Another level of markers is characterized by gross shifts in postural behavior,

involving half the body, indicating or marking a sequence of points or a point of view

expressed by the speaker. One marker on this level is simply the shift from leaning back

when listening to leaning forward when speaking. The observation that postural shifts

mark new stages of interaction or topic shifts, particularly at the beginning or ending of

speech segments, has been made by several researchers (Bull & Brown, 1977; Erickson,

1975; Scheflen, 1973). Markers on the next level are frequently complete changes in

location, following the presentation of one’stotalpositionduringaninteraction.

Kendon’s (1972b, 1980, 1987, 1988, 2004) detailed analyses of speech and

body movement confirm the notion of self-synchrony. He also supports the idea of

FIGURE 7-14

Some postural-kinesic markers of syntactic sentences in the United States.

220 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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a hierarchy of body movements that acts in conjunction with our speech behavior.

Kendon found that the wrist and fingers tended to change positions most often, fol-

lowed by the forearm, then the upper arm. Elements of the face generally changed

more often than the head, and trunk and lower limb movements were rare. The

larger units of body movement were related to the larger units of speech, and the

smaller body units were related to the smaller verbal units.

Kendon also made some important observations of when movements occur in

relation to the speech stream. Some movements accompany speech, but many precede

speech units. The time between the speech-preparatory body movement and the onset

of speech is apparently related to the size of the impending speech unit, with earlier

and more extensive behavior, involving more body parts, for larger speech units.

A change in body posture, for instance, may precede a long utterance and may be

held for the duration of the utterance. Like other researchers in this area, Kendon

believes that the hierarchically structured body movements probably convey informa-

tion about verbal structure and communicative involvement. The positions of the

head, limbs, and body sometimes forecast information to a listener, such as the length

of utterance and change in argument strategy or viewpoint. The act of forecasting

upcoming components of speech through gesture is a crucial function in social inter-

action. Speakers often shift their gaze to their hands during the production of iconic

gestures, thereby calling them to the attention of the listener. Speaker gaze returns to

the listener as the speech unit projected by the gesture is completed. In this process,

gaze acts as a gesture pointer (Streeck, 1993; Streeck & Knapp, 1992).

The linkage of gestures to speech has also been demonstrated in studies that

show how gestures help speakers access and retrieve words from their mental lexi-

con (Hadar, 1989; Krauss & Hadar, 1999; Krauss et al., 1996; Morrel-Samuels &

Krauss, 1992). Support for the word-retrieval function of gestures has been found

using children, adults, and those with a language disability (Hanlon, Brown, &

Gerstman, 1990; Pine, Bird, & Kirk, 2007; Rausher, Krauss, & Chen, 1996).

Hanlon et al. showed that they could improve word retrieval in a picture-naming

task by training aphasies to perform gestures just prior to the naming task. This

important role of gestures in lexical retrieval and speech production is often

overlooked and underemphasized, but it is clear that gestures facilitate both the

invention of messages and their organization and delivery.

The preceding research leads us to conclude that speech and gesture are coordi-

nated. But why? It is most likely because they are two components used in the

expression of a single unit of content. Both systems are being guided by the same

overall purpose, and both systems seem to be under the governance of the same

parts of the brain (Cicone, Wapner, Foldi, Zurif, & Gardner, 1979; Gentilucci &

Dalla Volta, 2008; Kimura, 1976). As Kendon (2000, p. 61) said, “[A]lthough

each expresses somewhat different dimensions of the meaning, speech and gesture

are co-expressive of a single inclusive ideational complex, and it is this that is the

meaning of the utterance.”It is not unreasonable, then, to assume a pathological

state for people manifesting out-of-sync behavior (Condon, 1980). Nor should it

surprise us that gestures and speech both break down in aphasia (McNeill, 1992).

Developmentally, gesture and speech also appear to grow up together and fol-

low similar developmental trajectories (Göksun, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2010;

Graham & Kilbreath, 2007). Because these gestures occur throughout the lifespan,

CHAPTER 7THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 221

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they can offer clues to the development or deterioration of a person’s cognitive and

linguistic skills Goldin-Meadow & Iverson (2010). For instance, Petitto and

Marentette (1991) argue that manual infant “babbling,”rather than oral babbling,

may serve as a precursor to language learning. Several other studies indicate that

children use more gestures as they develop, just as they use more words, and the

nature of that gesticulation varies with the changing nature of speech production

(McNeill, 1992). Children eventually learn how to combine words and gestures.

Because gesture–speech combinations (pointing at food and saying “eat”) occur

earlier than speech–speech combinations (“eat food”) in children, they can serve as

a developmental marker of sorts (Bates & Dick, 2002). Boys, for example, tend to

produce gesture–speech combinations later than girls, and thus also produce speech–

speech combinations later than girls do (Ozcaliskan & Goldin-Meadew, 2010).

INTERACTION SYNCHRONY

The preceding section revealed a speech–body movement coordination within the

actions of a single speaker. This section provides information about a speech–body

movement coordination between two speakers—a kind of social rhythm (Bernieri &

Rosenthal, 1991). This behavior has been studied in two ways, which we call

matching and meshing.

MATCHING Without always being very aware of it, human beings commonly tend

to mimic the mannerisms, facial expressions, postures, and other behaviors of the

people they interact with. This has been called the “chameleon effect”(Chartrand

& Bargh, 1999)—not because people, like chameleons, change colors to match

their environment, but because people change their postures, gestures, and manner-

isms to match those of their interaction partners. Interestingly, some individuals

are more chameleon-like than others, such as those who tend to see their “self”as

more connected to other people (van Baaren, Horgan, Chartrand, & Dijkmans,

2004).

Mimicry usually occurs completely outside of our conscious awareness, even

though we might use matching behavior intentionally when we are trying to com-

municate affiliation. Also, situational factors can affect mimicry; van der Schalk

and colleagues (2011) showed that people are more likely to mimic the facial dis-

plays of members of their ingroup than those of outgroup members. It is worth

noting here that mimicking the behavior of outgroup members, such as people

from a different racial group, may be one way of reducing prejudice toward them

(Inzlicht, Gutsell, & Legault, 2011).

Matching the behavior of our fellow interactant may occur in several different

ways. Sometimes a speaker’s behavior is followed in kind by the listener when he

or she becomes the speaker (Cappella, 1981). Here the matched behavior occurs

not simultaneously but in sequence. Chapter 11 reports research that shows how

we tend to match our partner’s utterance duration, loudness, precision of articula-

tion, latency of response, silence duration, and speech rate. We also appear to

mimic the cospeech gestures of others (Holler & Wilkin, 2011). Of importance,

when we mimic gestures we might better understand their meaning (Alibali &

Hostetter, 2010). In some instances, though, the speaker’sbehaviorelicitsanoffsetting

222 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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or compensatory behavior from the other person. For example, if a speaker is lean-

ing toward a listener and the listener perceives the interaction distance to be too

close, the listener will likely lean away or increase the interaction distance in other

ways (see Chapter 5).

Other researchers have been interested in those occasions when both interac-

tion partners exhibit the same behavior at the same time. Postural congruence is

one of those frequently matched behaviors. It may involve crossing the legs and/or

arms, leaning, head propping, or any number of other positions. Notice the variety

of postural congruence in Figures 7-15, 7-16, and 7-17. When the listener’s

behavior is a mirror image of the speaker’s, this form of matching is called

mirroring.

Postural congruence has been observed to occur during periods of more posi-

tive speech, is rated by observers as an indicator of rapport and cooperation, and

has been established as an act that is influential in creating rapport (Charney,

1966; LaFrance, 1979, 1985; LaFrance & Broadbent, 1976; Trout & Rosenfeld,

1980). Nonconscious mimicry has also been found to occur more often with people

who enter an interaction with the goal to affiliate or establish rapport (Lakin &

Chartrand, 2003), and interpersonal synchrony is stronger among those with a

FIGURE 7-15

Postural congruence. The pair facing each other in the foreground is showing matching postures; the pair facing each

other in the background is showing mirror-image postures.

CHAPTER 7THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 223

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prosocial (versus proself) orientation (Lumsden, Miles, Richardson, Smith, &

Macrae, 2011). Of course, a stronger desire to affiliate makes mimicry even more

likely (Yabar, Johnston, Miles, & Peace, 2006). In one study, a trained actor selec-

tively mimicked postures and gestures of only some students in an interview situa-

tion. In a post-interview assessment of their partner, the actor, students who had

FIGURE 7-16

Examples of postural congruence through head propping and leaning.

Avery K. Davis

Fuse/JupiterImages

224 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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FIGURE 7-17

Notice the postural congruence exhibited by cabinet official Joseph Califano and former President

Jimmy Carter, 1977.

AP Photo

AP Photo AP Photo

CHAPTER 7THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 225

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been mimicked evaluated their partner significantly more favorably and indicated

they “identified”with him or that he “thought like me”(Dabbs, 1969). None of

the students reported an awareness of the mimicry. Chartrand and Bargh (1999)

also found mimicry to increase the degree of liking on the part of an interaction

partner. In short, mimicry seems to occur more often when we are other-oriented;

for example, when we want to be liked by others, feel concerned about others,

seek a closer relationship with others, show dependence on others, and see our

“self”as more connected to other people.

Bavelas and her colleagues would agree that postural mimicry is most likely to

occur when we are other oriented, but they did not find that it was a sign of rapport

or cooperation. Instead, they found that postural mimicry occurred during periods of

conversational involvement rather than during cooperation or periods of rapport.

Bavelas maintains it is a signal that the participants are talking with each other

rather than at each other, performing symmetrical roles rather than complementary

ones. From this perspective, the matching of an interaction partner’snonverbal

behavior reflects the moment-to-moment aspects of conversational involvement.

Bavelas has also studied a related phenomenon she calls motor mimicry.

A common example of motor mimicry is when a person you are near drops a

heavy weight on his or her foot. As the injured party reacts in pain, your wincing

facial expression seems to register an empathic response (see Figure 7-18). For

many years, scholars believed this was a purely empathic reaction based on one

person vicariously experiencing what another person is going through. The work

of Bavelas and her colleagues does not deny this inner experience, but their

research also shows that motor mimicry is primarily a communicative phenome-

non. Wincing in reaction to another’s injury, for example, depended strongly on

the visual accessibility of the injured party (i.e., to what extent can the two make

eye contact with each other?) in Bavelas’s experiments. Specifically, more motor

mimicry was seen as the probability of eye contact went up. Furthermore, the pat-

tern and timing of the wincer’s reaction was determined by the probability of eye

contact with the victim (Bavelas, Black, Chovil, Lemery, & Mullett, 1988; Bavelas,

Black, Lemery, & Mullett, 1986). In a related study, Kimbara (2008) found that

visual accessibility to another interactant during a joint description of previously

viewed video clips also led to a greater similarity in the shape of their hand gestures

than the same task without visual access to their partner.

This tendency to match and mimic the behavior of others posturally, facially,

vocally, and so forth, sometimes leads to a condition known as emotional conta-

gion, which occurs when an emotional experience is triggered as a result of mim-

icking someone else’s behavior. Two of the essential conditions for this process to

occur include strongly felt emotions and communicators who are skilled encoders

and decoders (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994). Some people are more sus-

ceptible to emotional contagion than others, which might be a good or bad thing

depending on the emotion being decoded. More susceptible people might feel better

around a happy friend, and more miserable around a sad one. As evidence of this,

Magen and Konasewich (2011) noted that women’s positive emotion state was

more likely to suffer than men’s after interacting with a troubled friend, thus show-

ing the potential costs associated with women’s greater susceptibility to another

person’s negative emotion state.

226 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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MESHING Another way of examining the phenomenon of interaction synchrony has

been to observe the ongoing co-occurrence of changes in movement and speech by

each of two interactants. In this type of research, changes refer to the initiation,

termination, speed, and/or direction of the behaviors under study. Like matching

behavior, meshing has also been linked to conversational satisfaction and liking

for one’s interaction partner (Cappella, 1997).

a

b

FIGURE 7-18

(a) Former President Ronald Reagan and former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger exchange

similar facial expressions. (b) An onlooker winces in pain as another experiences it.

Jose R. Lopez/The New York Times

CHAPTER 7THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 227

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The study of meshing behavior arose out of Condon’s earlier work on self-

synchrony. He observed how both interactants seemed to coordinate their actions.

One person (Davis, 1971) who viewed his films reported this:

The third film clip Condon showed me was an example of heightened synchrony. A

man and a woman—employer and job applicant—sat facing each other in a sequence

that at normal speed seemed merely to involve rather a lot of shifting around, as the

man first uncrossed and then recrossed his legs and the woman stirred in her chair. But

when the film was run through a few frames at a time, their synchrony became clear.

In the same frame, the two began to lean toward each other. They stopped at the same

split second, both raised their heads, and then they swept backwards together into their

chairs, stopping in the same frame. It was very like the elaborate courtship dances of

some birds, or—in Condon’s favorite analogy—they were like puppets moved by the

same set of strings. Condon told me that this kind of heightened synchrony happens often

between male and female. During courtship, it’soneofthewaysinwhichvaststatements

can be made between a man and a woman without a word being said. (p. 103)

As Condon suggests, this kind of interaction synchrony may reflect the nature

of the ongoing relationship, whether it is the extent of involvement and rapport or

the degree of intimate, interpersonal knowledge about the other. In some instances,

this relationship is dramatically visible by the kind of synchrony taking place. At

other times, the coordination may be seen only in the microscopic analysis of indi-

vidual film frames. Out-of-sync partners are not likely to value the experience. The

fact that out-of-sync experiences tend to stand out for us reminds us how often we

operate in synchrony with others. Out-of-sync behavior may reflect decreased lis-

tening, a lack of knowledge of one’s partner, and ultimately influence what we

remember about the other person (e.g., Miles, Nind, Henderson, & Macrae,

2010). Interaction synchrony may also be a precursor of language learning.

Condon and Sander (1974) found babies 12 hours old whose head, hand, elbow,

hip, and leg movements tended to correspond to the rhythms of human speech.

When the babies were exposed to disconnected speech or to plain tapping sounds,

however, the rhythmic pattern was not observed. If this finding is validated by

other researchers, it may mean an infant has participated in, and has laid the

groundwork for, various linguistic forms and structures long before formal lan-

guage learning begins (see Bernieri, Reznick, & Rosenthal, 1988).

Sometimes our responses as listeners and the feedback we provide in the form

of facial expressions or head movements appear at specific junctures in the speech

of our partner. Vocalizations such as “mmm-hmm”and “I see,”and head nods

and movements of hands and feet tend to occur at the ends of rhythmical units of

the speaker’s utterance, that is, at pauses within phonemic clauses but mainly at

junctures between these clauses. Vocally stressed words also tend to be accompa-

nied by movements. Listener gestures and movements are often indications that

the listener understands, appreciates, or anticipates speaker behavior.

Dittmann (1972) noticed that adults sometimes believe children are not listen-

ing to them and badger them with questions like “Did you hear me?”Dittmann

reasoned that this common adult perception of children may be associated with

the absence of what he calls “listener responses”such as head nods, some eyebrow

raises, some types of smiles, and verbal acknowledgements such as “yeah,”and

“I see”. His study of children in grades 1, 3, and 5 found these listener responses

228 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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to be nearly absent except under “the strongest social pull”by the other interac-

tant. Subsequent studies indicated the major deficiencies were in “mmm-hmm”and

head-nod responses. By 8th grade, a dramatic increase in these listener responses

was found. By early adolescence, peers begin to lengthen their response duration,

providing more opportunity for such listener responses. The “response pull”from

adult interactants is increasing, and a continuing movement away from a purely

self-orientation toward imagining what others are experiencing occurs. The detailed

observations of researchers like Condon, Dittmann, and Kendon offer clear evi-

dence that human interactants do exhibit a speech–body movement interaction syn-

chrony. It is also clear that this synchrony may take place on very microscopic

levels. Still, there are questions: How much of this synchrony is due to an ordered

relationship between speech and body movements, and how much is due to coinci-

dence? Are there social contexts that intensify the degree of synchrony? How much

synchrony is desirable? At least one study suggests that moderately rhythmic social

interactions are evaluated most positively (Warner, Malloy, Schneider, Knoth, &

Wilder, 1987). Is it possible to predict which behaviors will synchronize with

which other behaviors at certain times? And, finally, what is the best method of

measuring these minute behavioral changes (Gatewood & Rosenwein, 1981;

McDowall, 1978a,b; Rosenfeld, 1981)?

SUMMARY

Although gestures are difficult to define, we often

seem to know what movements a person is using

to communicate and what movements are merely

nervous mannerisms, expressions associated with

emotion, and task-related movements. Gestures

help us communicate in many ways: They replace

speech when we cannot or do not want to talk

and help us regulate the back-and-forth flow of

interaction. They establish and maintain atten-

tion, add emphasis to our speech, and assist in

making memorable the content of our speech.

Although we do gesture when interaction part-

ners are not visible, such as over the telephone,

gestures are more frequent when both interac-

tants are visible to each other. We seem to use

more gestures when we are knowledgeable

about the topic being discussed, highly motivated

to have our listeners understand our message,

trying to dominate a conversation, excited and

enthusiastic about the topic being discussed,

and speaking about manual activities. Gestures

also play an important role in word retrieval

and speech production. So the absence of ges-

tures may negatively affect the speaker’s message

as well as a listener’s comprehension.

Two major types of gestures were discussed:

speech independent and speech related. Speech-

independent gestures are operationally defined

as gestures that 70 percent of the usage commu-

nity decodes in a similar way. They have an

almost direct verbal definition. We are normally

keenly aware of using this type of gesture.

Culture affects the number, frequency, and mean-

ings associated with speech-independent gestures.

Although no universal gestures of this type have

been found—that is, none have the same meaning

and form in every culture studied—the most likely

candidates would be gestures of affirmation and

negation and those meaning “stop”and “Idon’t

know”and gestures that indicate sleeping, eating,

and drinking. Some speech-independent gestures

are culture specific; that is, they are not found in

the same form in other cultures. Many gestures

have basically the same form but different mean-

ings from culture to culture, and these different

meanings are often the source of cross-cultural

misunderstandings.

The other major category of gestures is

speech-related gestures. Some of these gestures

characterize the content of speech, and some

CHAPTER 7THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 229

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show the speaker’s relationship to the referent

by indicating whether the speaker is certain or

uncertain, embracing an idea or distancing her-

self or himself from it, and the like. Some speech-

related gestures are used to accent or emphasize

speech units. Interactive gestures, unlike the other

speech-related gestures, focus on the dialogue

rather than the speaker’s monologue. Interactive

gestures focus on the ongoing involvement of the

interactants and their shared roles.

The last part of this chapter examined the

coordination and synchrony of speech and body

movements. This synchrony between the larger

and smaller units of speech and body is called

self-synchrony. Gesture and speech, then, seem

to be different outward manifestations of a pro-

cess controlled and guided by the same parts of

the brain. Gesture and speech both play a role in

communicating the same content. In addition

to a self-synchrony, interactants also seem to

display coordinated exchanges of behavior in

many ways that suggest the existence of an inter-

action synchrony as well. Interaction synchrony

can manifest itself through matching behavior—

similar behavior occurring at the same time (pos-

tural congruence or motor mimicry) or similar

behavior occurring in sequence (one speaker raises

his or her voice, followed by the next speaker rais-

ing his or her voice). Interaction synchrony can

also manifest itself in the moment-to-moment

coordination of changes in the direction and tim-

ing of speech and movement, even though we do

not yet know exactly what behaviors will change

and how they will change.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Spend some time during the day interacting

without using hand gestures. What problems

did you encounter, if any? What does your

experience tell you about the relationship of

gestures and speech?

2. Some researchers have found matching

behavior to be associated with rapport

between the interactants. Can you think of

a situation in which rapport would not

involve matching behavior? Can you think

of a situation in which matching occurred

but there was not much rapport?

3. Can you think of any instance in which ges-

tures might pose a challenge to the doctrine

of freedom of speech?

4. Select a speech-independent gesture. Discuss

the meaning of this gesture when accompa-

nied by different facial expressions and

speech.

230 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN

COMMUNICATION

[CHAPTER8]

The scene is a university library, but it could just as easily be the local supermarket,

bank, or restaurant. What happens takes about half a second and is not noticed by

those experiencing it. Remarkably, however, this event affects their evaluation of

their experience in the library. What could be so mysterious and so powerful?

The answer begins with three researchers at Purdue University (Fisher, Rytting,

& Heslin, 1976), who wanted to investigate systematically the effects of a brief,

seemingly accidental touch in a nonintimate context. They had male and female

clerks return library cards to some students by placing their hand directly over the

student’s palm, making physical contact; other students were not touched. Outside

the library, a researcher approached the students and asked questions about their

feelings toward the library clerk and the library in general. Students who were

touched, especially the females, evaluated the clerk and the library significantly

more favorably than those who were not touched. This was true for students who

were aware of being touched and those who were not.

Awareness of the power of a seemingly insignificant touch may be one reason

why politicians are so eager to press the flesh (shake hands in political slang).

Touch serves many functions and conveys many messages (Hertenstein, 2011). It

is a crucial aspect of most human relationships, except for those that are exclu-

sively online. The act of touching is like any other message we communicate: It

may elicit positive, neutral, or negative reactions, depending on the configuration

of the touch, the people involved, and the circumstances. We can find happiness in

another person’s arms. We may feel indifferent to a handshake done out of

We often talk about the way we talk, and we frequently try to see the way we see,

but for some reason we have rarely touched on the way we touch.

—Desmond Morris

231

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convention. And we can be provoked into anger from touching that seems inappro-

priate to us, and reciprocate with a not-so-subtle form of touching ourselves (e.g.,

push, slap, or punch). We know people who respond positively to touching and

need a lot of it, sometimes referred to as touchy-feely types. We also know others

who seem to evaluate almost all touching negatively. Variability in the need for

and to reaction to touch may be related to differences in temperament as well as

childhood experiences. In the next section, we discuss the importance of touching

throughout the life span.

TOUCHING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

Tactile communication is probably the most basic and primitive form of communi-

cation. In fact, tactile sensitivity may be the first sensory process to become func-

tional, and it is the most developed sense at birth. In fetal life, the child begins to

respond to vibrations of the mother’s pulsating heartbeat, which impinge on the

child’s entire body and are magnified by the amniotic fluid. Interestingly, infants

of depressed mothers have been shown to benefit in utero from the massage ther-

apy that their mothers had received (Field, Diego, Hernandez-Reif, Deeds, & Fig-

ueiredo, 2009).

Research shows that touch is critical to normal physiological growth in new-

borns. Maternal licking of rat pups stimulates growth hormone production, and

massage with pressure stimulates weight gain in preterm infants and continues to

be associated with mental and motor development a year later (Field, 1998).

Parent–infant bonding may also be fostered by tactile contact during a critical

period in the first hours after birth, but the research on this is mixed (Hertenstein,

Verkamp, Kerestes, & Holmes, 2006).

Infants gain knowledge of themselves and the world around them through

tactile explorations with their mouths and hands. Their mental representations

depend on the integration of input from touching and seeing objects in their sur-

roundings; for example, a bowling ball is different from a beach ball because

they do not look or feel the same. During early childhood, words accompany

touch until the child associates the two; then words may replace touch entirely.

A mother may gently stroke or pat an infant to console him or her. As the child

grows older, the mother may stroke and pat the child while murmuring encour-

aging words. Eventually, instead of touching the child, the mother may simply

call from another room, “It’sallright,Mommy’shere.”As words replace

touch, an intimate closeness may still be present because of the earlier

associations.

Gender differences show up early. After 6 months of age, girls are not only

allowed but encouraged to spend more time touching and staying near their par-

ents than boys. Harrison-Speake and Willis (1995) gathered adults’views on the

appropriateness of different kinds of parental touch with children of different ages.

Clear norms were evident: Touch was seen as increasingly inappropriate as chil-

dren grew from toddlers to young teenagers, especially for fathers and for boys.

White respondents were more approving of parental touch than were African-

American respondents, regardless of the kind of touch, the child’s age, or the gen-

der of the child or parent.

232 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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Several observations of touching behavior have been made in the context of the

developing child’s school experiences. In one study, preschool boys tended to touch

their male teachers more than their female teachers; preschool girls touched tea-

chers of both sexes about equally. The teachers themselves usually touched children

of their own sex more (Perdue & Connor, 1978). However, in general, teachers

may be using nurturing forms of touch less these days because of concerns about

how their touch will be viewed by others (Owen & Gillentine, 2011). Willis and

his colleagues (Willis & Hoffman, 1975; Willis & Reeves, 1976) observed children

in elementary school and junior high school. From kindergarten through sixth

grade, the amount of touching steadily declined but still surpassed most reports of

adult touching. This same trend occurred in junior high, with about half as much

touching as in the primary grades. The most touching occurred between same-sex

dyads. African-American children, especially African-American females, tended to

exhibit more touching behavior. Although touching in the primary grades is more

often initiated with the hands, junior high students showed much more shoulder-

to-shoulder and elbow-to-elbow touching. Junior high females began to show

more aggressive touching, and junior high boys were touched in more places, pri-

marily because of the play fighting so common at that age. During adolescence,

tactile experiences with members of the same sex, and then the opposite sex,

become increasingly important.

The use of touch to communicate emotional and relational messages to the

elderly may be crucial, particularly as the reliance on verbal and cognitive messages

wanes. Although we seem to give the aged in the United States a greater license to

touch others, it is not clear how much others touch them. No doubt the infirmities

of age require more touching, but it may make a big difference whether this

increased touching is merely functional and professional or whether it expresses

affection. Observations of touching in four homes for the elderly revealed that in

such places, females tend to initiate more touching than do males. And, as in child-

hood, same-sex touch is more likely than touch between members of the opposite

sex (Rinck, Willis, & Dean, 1980).

The importance of touch early in life to children’s development and interac-

tions with others has been clearly documented (Feldman, 2011; Moszkowski,

Stack, & Chiarella, 2009; Stack & Jean, 2011). Moreover, even among physically

healthy infants, touch in the form of massage has benefits to infants that should

be of interest to parents, including positive effects on their patterns of sleep (Under-

down, Barlow, & Stewart-Brown, 2010). It seems that, in general, early tactile

experiences are crucial to infants’later physical, mental, and emotional adjustment.

Youngsters who have little physical contact during infancy may be slower to learn

to walk and talk, and some instances of difficulties and retardation in reading and

speech are also associated with early deprivation of, and confusion in, tactile com-

munication. Physical violence in adults may also be related to deprivation of touch

during infancy.

Ashley Montagu (1971) cited many animal and human studies to support the

theory that tactile satisfaction during infancy and childhood is of fundamental

importance to subsequent healthy behavioral development. He maintained that it

is not possible to handle a child too much, as “there is every reason to believe

that, just as the salamander’s brain and nervous system develops more fully in

CHAPTER 8THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 233

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response to peripheral stimulation, so does the brain and nervous system of the

human being”(p. 188). Harlow’s (1958) famous “surrogate mother”experiments

offer supporting evidence from the animal world for the importance of touch for

infants in stressful situations. Harlow constructed a monkey mother figure out of

wire that could provide milk and protection; then he constructed another one out

of sponge rubber and terry cloth that did not provide milk. Because infant mon-

keys consistently chose the terry cloth mother, Harlow concluded that contact com-

fort was a more important part of the mother–child relationship for monkeys than

was sustenance per se. Psychologically, nursing was less important as a food source

and more important as a source of reassuring touch. Maternal touch also has been

shown to reduce the impact of stressful situations on human infants (Feldman,

Singer, & Zagoory, 2010).

WHO TOUCHES WHOM, WHERE, WHEN, AND HOW MUCH?

The amount and kind of contact experienced in adulthood varies considerably with

the age, personality, sex, situation, culture, and relationship of the parties involved.

We explore these factors briefly here (see Chapter 12 for more discussion of gen-

der, dominance, and culture).

There are reports of married couples who have so little to say to each other, or

who find it so difficult to establish closeness through verbal contact, that physical

contact during sexual encounters becomes a primary mode of communication for

establishing closeness. Many factors in the development of American society have

led to a common expectation that touching is conducted only in extremely personal

and intimate relationships, which leads to the belief that all touching is somehow

sensuous in nature. The irony is that long-term intimates probably touch each

other less, and less intimately, than those who are either working to establish a

romantic relationship or working to restore one that is losing intimacy (Emmers &

Dindia, 1995; Guerrero & Andersen, 1991; McDaniel & Andersen, 1998). For

intimates in long-established romantic relationships, the quality of touch has likely

replaced the quantity needed to initially establish the relationship as an intimate

one. In married relations also, people are more likely to reciprocate touch than in

dating relationships (Guerrero & Andersen, 1994).

For some individuals, the contact occurring in a crowded commuter train or

theater lobby is very uncomfortable, especially opposite-sex contacts for women

and same-sex contacts for men. Explanations for such feelings are numerous.

Some children grow up learning not to touch a multitude of animate and inanimate

objects. They are told not to touch their own body and later not to touch the body

of their dating partner. Care is taken so children do not see their parents touch

each other intimately. Touching is associated with admonitions of “not nice”or

“bad”and is punished accordingly. Because of such experiences, some people

become nontouchers in any situation.

Studies have tried to identify the personality characteristics of people who

enjoy touching and those who do not (Andersen, Andersen, & Lustig, 1987;

Deethardt & Hines, 1983). Sometimes these studies rely on self-reports of touch

avoidance and reactions to touch. Fortunately, the self-description of oneself as

touch avoidant or not has proved to be quite valid in many studies.

234 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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Touch-avoiders stand farther from others, respond negatively to touch in a live

interaction, touch their relationship partners less in public, tend to have lower self-

esteem, and are more likely to be Protestant than Jewish (Andersen, 2005). Non-

touchers, when compared with touchers, report more anxiety and tension in their

lives, less satisfaction with their bodies, and more suspicion of others; they are

also more socially withdrawn and more likely to be rigid or authoritarian in their

beliefs. Men are also more likely to describe themselves as touch avoidant than

women are. Dorros, Hanzal, and Segrin (2008) found that adults who reported a

more positive attitude toward touch had personalities that were more agreeable,

more open to experience, and less neurotic than those who had a more negative

attitude.

Certain situations have a facilitating or inhibiting effect on touching behavior.

Several studies have demonstrated that in public places, where most observational

research is done, touching can be quite infrequent. As an example, Hall and Veccia

(1990) observed 4,500 pairs of people in public places and found that only 15 per-

cent were already touching or engaged in touch during the observation period. Sim-

ilarly, Remland, Jones, and Brinkman (1991) observed dyads in public places in

several European locations and found that people touched in only 9 percent of the

interactions observed.

Henley (1977) gathered people’s opinions on touch patterns and concluded

that people think that the likelihood of touch is increased in the following situa-

tions, which imply underlying themes of power, intimacy, and emotion:

1. Giving information or advice rather than asking for it

2. Giving an order rather than responding to it

3. Asking a favor rather than agreeing to do one

4. Trying to persuade rather than being persuaded

5. Participating in a deep, rather than casual, conversation

6. Interacting at a party rather than at work

7. Communicating excitement rather than receiving it from another

8. Receiving messages of worry from another rather than sending such messages

Greetings and departures at airport terminals are communicative situations

that reflect a higher incidence of touching than would normally be expected. In

one study, 60 percent of the people observed in greetings touched; another study

reported that 83 percent of the participants touched (Greenbaum & Rosenfeld,

1980; Heslin & Boss, 1980). Heslin and Boss found that extended embraces and

greater intimacy of touch were more likely to occur during departures than greet-

ings. The stronger the emotion, as reflected in facial expressions, and the closer

the perceived relationship, the greater the chances of increased touching. Actual

relationship closeness, such as in romantic relationships as opposed to friendships,

has in fact been shown to predict the amount of interpersonal touching in public

(Afifi & Johnson, 1999; Guerrero, 1997).

Another situation likely to show a higher incidence of touch than normally

found in public settings involves team sports. In one study, the touching behavior

of bowlers during league play was observed and found to be far more frequent

than observations during normal social interaction (Smith, Willis, & Gier, 1980).

Similarly, Kneidinger, Maple, and Tross (2001) counted touches made on the field

CHAPTER 8THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 235

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during college baseball and softball games and found a high touching rate, averag-

ing more than 20 touches per inning.

Anthropologists and travelers, as well as researchers, have noted that touch

patterns differ according to culture and nationality. Some cultures seem very tactile,

and others are more “hands off”(DiBiase & Gunnoe, 2004; McDaniel & Andersen,

1998). We explore this topic further in Chapter 13, but let us note here that

cultures can differ in overall quantity of touch, the contextual rules that determine

when and how people touch, and in the meanings expressed by touch. Research

has not progressed far in mapping out these sources of variation. A strong likeli-

hood is that most touches have common meanings in different cultures, but the

norms for who can touch whom and when follow local customs. Most of our

knowledge about the psychology of touch and other nonverbal behaviors is based

on the study of white Americans.

Gender and relationships influence touching patterns. In his classic study,

Jourard (1966) asked what parts of the body people think are touched most often.

He administered a questionnaire to students, who indicated which of 24 body parts

they had seen or touched on others, or that others had seen or touched on them,

within the previous 12 months. The other people were specified as mother, father,

same-sex friend, and opposite-sex friend. Among other findings, Jourard’s study

found that females were perceived as considerably more accessible to touch by all

of the people specified than males were. Opposite-sex friends and mothers were

reported as doing the most touching. Many fathers were recalled as touching not

much more than the hands of the subjects. The likelihood of opposite-sex touching

of course depends greatly on the relationship between the parties, and this kind of

touch is more likely when intimacy and familiarity are high (Stier & Hall, 1984).

Jourard’s data were gathered over 50 years ago. A replication of this study

more than a decade later revealed about the same results—with one exception

(Rosenfeld, Kartus, & Ray, 1976). It seems that both males and females are per-

ceived as even more accessible to opposite-sex friends than they were in the preced-

ing decade, with increased touching reported for body parts normally considered

more intimate, such as chest, stomach, hips, and thighs. Of course, when people

are asked to recall where they have been touched and how often, there is always

the possibility that these recollections will not be accurate. Jones (1991) found

that the number of body parts actually contacted was consistently fewer than

those anticipated or recalled by students filling out a questionnaire.

We pursue the topic of gender differences in touch further in Chapter 12. Suf-

fice it to say here that the observation of gender differences in nonverbal behavior

raises many interesting questions about determinants. Henley (1977) proposed the

hypothesis that gender differences in touch, as well as several other nonverbal

behaviors, are closely tied to gender differences in dominance and power, with the

general hypothesis being that differences between men and women parallel differ-

ences between powerful and weak people in society at large. The evidence support-

ing Henley’s hypothesis is mixed and is undermined by the very inconsistent

evidence of systematic differences in nonverbal behavior, including touching,

according to the dominance–power dimension (Hall, 2011b; Hall, Coats, & Smith

LeBeau, 2005; see Chapter 12). For instance, gender differences have been found

among men and women in supervisory roles, with women reporting nonsexually

236 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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touching their subordinates more than their male counterparts (Fuller et al., 2011).

If power differences solely accounted for gender differences in touching behavior,

one might expect male and female supervisors to report similar levels of positive

touching behavior on the job.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF TOUCHING BEHAVIOR

Argyle (1975) listed the following kinds of bodily contact as most common in

Western culture*:

Type of Touch Bodily Areas Typically Involved

Patting Head, back

Slapping Face, hand, buttocks

Punching Face, chest

Pinching Cheek

Stroking Hair, face, upper body, knee, genitals

Shaking Hands, shoulders

Kissing Mouth, cheek, breasts, hand, foot, genitals

Licking Face, genitals

Holding Hand, arm, knee, genitals

Guiding Hand, arm

Embracing Shoulder, body

Linking Arms

Laying on Hands

Kicking Legs, buttocks

Grooming Hair, face

Tickling Almost anywhere

*We made the following alterations to the original list: (1) changed bottom to buttocks; (2) added genitals to four

categories; and (3) added shoulders to the shaking category.

Morris (1977) reported on field observations that led to the naming of 457

types of body contact, falling into 14 major types of public body contact occurring

between two people. Some of these forms of touch can be seen in Figure 8-1. Some-

times the specific nature of a relationship can be deduced by observing the way

touching is enacted. Morris’s major categories of nonaggressive touching include

the following:

1. The handshake. The strength of the tie or desired tie between the participants

can often be observed by watching the nonshaking hand.

2. The body-guide. Here, touching is a substitute for pointing. The person

guiding the other’s body is frequently the person in charge during that

encounter.

3. The pat. Morris says that when adults pat other adults, it is often a condes-

cending gesture or a sexual one. The well-known exception is the congratula-

tory pat, often on the buttocks, following a successful performance in men’s

team sports.

CHAPTER 8THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 237

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4. The arm-link. This may be used for support when one person is infirm, but it

is also frequently used to indicate a close relationship. The person in charge,

says Morris, is less likely to be the person grasping the other’s arm.

5. The shoulder embrace. This half-embrace is used in male–female romantic

relationships as well as to signify buddies in male–male relationships.

6. The full embrace or hug. This gesture frequently occurs during moments of

intense emotion, sporting events, romance,greetings,andfarewells.Itisalsoused

ritualistically to show a relationship closer than a handshake would indicate.

7. The hand-in-hand. When adults hold hands with children, it is designed for

support, to keep children close, or to protect them. As adults, handholding

suggests an equality within the relationship, because both parties are perform-

ing the same act. It is often thought of in opposite-sex relationships, but

same-sex handholding is not uncommon, even between males (e.g., children,

high-contact cultures).

8. The waist embrace. According to Morris, the waist embrace is frequently

substituted for the full embrace when the participants wish to signal more inti-

macy than handholding or a shoulder embrace yet still remain mobile.

9. The kiss. The location, pressure, duration, and openness of a kiss help signal

the closeness or desired closeness between two people at a particular moment.

10. The hand-to-head. Given the highly vulnerable nature of the head area, letting

someone touch us on the head shows a trusting, often intimate, relationship.

11. The head-to-head. Two people touching heads render them incapable of

regarding other ongoing activities in a normal manner, so this is usually

thought of as an agreement by both parties to shut out the rest of the world—

a condition especially common to young lovers.

12. The caress. This signal is associated with romantic feelings for a partner,

although like any signal, it can be used by nonintimates who are trying to

deceive others about the depth of their relationship.

13. The body support. Parents often support children by carrying, lifting, or let-

ting them sit in their laps. Such support may be sought among adults in play-

ful situations, or when one person feels physically helpless.

14. The mock attack. Aggressive-looking behaviors are sometimes performed in a

nonaggressive manner: for example, arm-punches, hair-rufflings, pushes,

pinches, and ear-nibbles. We sometimes allow or even encourage such gestures

with friends to show the range of behavioral understanding between us. And

sometimes these mock-attack touches are substitutes for more loving touches

that may be too embarrassing, such as in the case of some fathers wishing to

show love for their sons.

Another method of categorizing the various types of touching was undertaken

by Heslin and Alper (1983). This taxonomy is based on the functions of the mes-

sages communicated and ranges from less personal to more personal types of

touch. Accidental touches and aggressive touches seem to be a part of the intimacy

continuum but are not presented in this list.

1. Functional/professional. The communicative intent of this impersonal, often

cold and businesslike, touching is to accomplish some task or to perform some

service. The other person is considered an object or nonperson to keep any

238 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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FIGURE 8-1

Some common forms of touch. (a) Full embrace. (b) Shoulder embrace. (c) Arm-link. (d) Kiss.

(e) Head-to-head.

c

d

e

b

a

fStop/Alamy

Alistair Berg/Digital Vision/Getty Images

Blend Images/Getty Images

Goodshot/Jupiter Images

Siri Stafford/Getty Images

CHAPTER 8THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 239

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intimate or sexual messages from interfering with the task at hand. Examples

of such situations may include a golf pro with a student, a tailor with a cus-

tomer, or a physician with a patient.

2. Social/polite. This type of touching affirms the other person’s identity as a

member of the same species, operating by essentially the same rules of conduct

as functional or professional touch. Although the other is treated as a person,

there is still very little perceived involvement between the interactants. The

handshake is the best example of this type of touching. Although the hand-

shake is only about 150 years old, it was preceded by a handclasp, which goes

back at least as far as ancient Rome.

3. Friendship/warmth. This kind of touching behavior begins to recognize more

of the other person’s uniqueness and expresses a liking for that person. It is

oriented toward the other person as a friend. However, this type of touch may

engender uneasiness, because it can be misunderstood as intimate or sexual

touching. Private situations may exacerbate this problem, so it probably

will take place in public if the toucher anticipates the possibility of

misinterpretation.

4. Love/intimacy. When we lay a hand on the cheek of a person, or when we

fully embrace that person, we are probably expressing an emotional attach-

ment or attraction through touch. The other person is the object of feelings of

intimacy or love. The various kinds of touching at this point are probably the

least stereotyped and the most adapted to the specific other person.

5. Sexual arousal. Although sexual arousal is sometimes an integral part of love

and intimacy, it also may have characteristics distinct from that category. Here

we are primarily looking at touch as an experience of physical attraction only.

The other person is, in common parlance, a sex object.

Morris (1971) proposed that heterosexual couples in Western culture normally

go through a sequence of steps, similar to courtship patterns in other animal spe-

cies, on the road to sexual intimacy. Aside from the first three, notice that each of

the following steps involves some kind of touching: eye to body, eye to eye, voice

to voice, hand to hand, arm to shoulder, arm to waist, mouth to mouth, hand to

head, hand to body, mouth to breast, hand to genitals, and genitals to genitals or

mouth to genitals. Frotteurism is a clinical disorder that represents an extreme devi-

ation from this courtship pattern in which the afflicted person (usually male) may

quickly grab and rub the genitals of an unsuspecting person (usually female) in a

crowded place and fantasize about having an intimate relationship with her during

the contact.

It is a challenge to study touching behavior at all. Because people do not touch

much in public, at least in Western societies (see Chapter 13 for more on culture),

observers must wait long periods, and observe a great many people, to see many

touches. Furthermore, the private settings in which touch occurs more often tend to

be ones to which researchers do not have access. Therefore, naturalistic observation

is more difficult and time-consuming than for other kinds of nonverbal behavior.

For this reason, touch researchers use self-report methodology relatively more. To

demonstrate effects of touch, other challenges arise. Often, to create experimental

control, experimenters will train helpers (called confederates) to deliberately engage

240 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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in the behavior, or not, as in the library study mentioned earlier. Experiments are an

important way of studying the impact of specific behaviors. Lewis, Derlega, Shankar,

Cochard, and Finkel (1997) offer a valuable caution about the use of confederates

who are expected to control their behavior precisely. Despite training, confederates

may have difficulty controlling one behavior, such as touch, without simultaneously

changing other behaviors, such as smiling and gazing. It is sometimes hard, there-

fore, to know which behavioral cue was crucial in influencing the recipient of the

cues. A critical reader is wise to consider possible confounding effects of unintended

cues when evaluating research with these designs.

THE MEANINGS AND IMPACT OF INTERPERSONAL TOUCH

Data gathered by Jones and Yarbrough (1985) indicate a wide range of meanings

associated with touch. In their study, 39 male and female university students

recorded the details of each touch experience over a 3-day period. Over 1,500 acts

of social touching were analyzed. The following discussion incorporates their find-

ings, along with others.

TOUCH AS POSITIVE AFFECT

Positive touching may involve support, reassurance, appreciation, affection, and

sexual attraction, or, if the touch is sustained, it may send a message of inclusion

(i.e., “We’re together”). The enhanced positive affect that can be produced by

even fleeting touches may generalize to the entire local environment, as found in

the library study described at the beginning of this chapter and in the consumer

studies of Hornik (1991, 1992) in which shoppers touched by student greeters eval-

uated the store more favorably. A light, comforting pat by a female has been

shown to even increase the financial risk-taking behaviors of others, presumably

because they feel more secure (Levav & Argo, 2010).

Some kinds of touching behavior from nurses would fit into the category of

positive touching, if it is perceived as comforting and relaxing to the patient. Back

rubs and massages may also express positive feelings from a friend but may be per-

ceived as task related when performed by a professional massage therapist. Psy-

chotherapists, too, recognize the importance of performing touch in such a way

that it communicates positive regard but not too much intimacy. If touch is per-

ceived as an indication of interpersonal warmth, it may bring forth other related

behaviors, including increased verbal output from patients and improved patient

attitudes toward nurses (Aguilera, 1967; Pattison, 1973).

TOUCH AS NEGATIVE AFFECT

The students in Jones and Yarbrough’s study did not report many touches in this

category, but we clearly perceive some touches as an expression of negative atti-

tudes and emotions. An expression of anger or frustration may be conveyed by hit-

ting, slapping, pinching, or tightly squeezing another’s arm so the person cannot

escape. Generally, negative touch is much more likely among young children than

adults.

CHAPTER 8THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 241

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TOUCH AND DISCRETE EMOTIONS

Touch can do more than convey generalized positive and negative affect; it can

convey discrete emotions, and may even be the preferred channel for communi-

cating certain feelings, such as love and sympathy (App, McIntosh, Reed, &

Hertenstein, 2011). Hertenstein, Keltner, App, Bulleit, and Jaskolka (2006)

videotaped participants (touchers) while they tried to convey different emotions

just by touching the hand and forearm of another person (recipients). Viewers

who watched the video were able to identify, at levels better than guessing, the

emotions of anger, fear, happiness, disgust, love, sympathy, and disgust. Analysis

of the videos provided insight into how these emotions were conveyed. For exam-

ple, sympathy was expressed with stroking and patting, anger with hitting and

squeezing, and disgust with a pushing motion. There were also differences in

intensity and duration.

Unlike other nonverbal cues, touch can be experienced both by seeing it and by

receiving it. Hertenstein, Keltner, App, Bulleit, and Jaskolka (2006) also asked the

original recipients of the touch to guess what emotion was the toucher was trying

to convey. They could not see the touches, because the touching was done while

their arm was sticking through a curtain—they could only feel the touches. Anger,

fear, disgust, sympathy, love, and gratitude could be identified at better than gues-

sing levels, but some other emotions could not be accurately identified by those

receiving them, such as embarrassment, envy, pride, happiness, and surprise. In a

follow-up study by Thompson and Hampton (2011), though, romantic couples

but not strangers were able to communicate pride and envy to each other via

touch. This finding suggests that the relationship between two people may be

important to either the encoding or the decoding of emotions that are more self-

focused in nature among touchers.

People can also identify discrete emotions on another person’s face by feeling

that person’s face with their hands, as a blind person might do—another connec-

tion between touch and emotion. Even normally sighted individuals with no special

experience in doing this decoded six emotions at levels well above guessing, with

the highest accuracy for happiness, sadness, and surprise (Lederman et al., 2007).

TOUCH AS PLAY

Sometimes we interpret the touching we give and receive as attempts to reduce

the seriousness of a message—whether it is affection or aggression. When one

person goes through the motions of landing a knockout punch on the other per-

son, then stops the forward movement of the fist just as it makes contact with

the other person’s skin, the message is “I’m not fighting, I’m playing.”An accom-

panying smile or laugh may further reinforce this message. The ultimate in playful

touch is tickling, a phenomenon first addressed by psychologists nearly a century

ago and discussed even by Charles Darwin. One question is why we cannot tickle

ourselves, and whether the “other”who does the tickling must be human or

could as easily be a mechanical device. According to Harris and Christenfeld

(1999), a machine can tickle as well as a person provided there is an element of

unpredictability to it.

242 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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TOUCH AS INFLUENCE

Touch is associated with influence when its goal is to persuade the other to do

something. Jones and Yarbrough called these compliance touches, which may

include a variety of behaviors from fulfilling social obligations to actual helping

behavior, as evidenced by the following studies:

•Waitresses who touched diners got bigger tips (Crusco & Wetzel, 1984).

•Relative to nontouched customers, those who were touched briefly by their

waitress drank more alcohol compared to their partners (Kaufman & Maho-

ney, 1999). Customers in stores who were touched by a greeter spent more

time shopping and bought more (Hornik, 1991, 1992).

•Psychologists who touched students on the shoulder when requesting help

obtained greater compliance (Patterson, Powell, & Lenihan, 1986), and people

who were touched after agreeing to fill out a survey answered a significantly

larger number of items than people who agreed but were not touched

(Nannberg & Hansen, 1994).

•Practitioners who had touched patients got greater medication compliance

from them relative to those whom they did not touch (Guéguen, Meineri, &

Charles-Sire, 2010).

•In one study, people were touched on the arm for 1 second or less by a

stranger who asked them to hold on to a very active, large dog for 10 minutes

while the stranger went into a pharmacy (Guéguen & Fischer-Lokou, 2002);

even this very slight tactile contact produced a greater willingness to hold on

to the dog. Similarly, a female confederate asking for a cigarette from female

strangers was more likely to get one if she touched the stranger slightly on the

forearm (Joule & Gúeguen, 2007). In that study, unlike Fisher, Rytting, and

Heslin’s (1976) library study described at the beginning of the chapter, com-

pliance was greater among those who remembered being touched.

•Even without a direct request, being touched can increase helpfulness; when

a toucher walked away and then dropped his possessions as if by accident,

the person who was touched was more helpful (Guéguen & Fischer-Lokou,

2003).

The psychological mechanism accounting for these findings is likely to be positive

affect and the personal bonding that may be implied (nonconsciously) by even a

fleeting and seemingly insignificant touch between strangers. These findings suggest

that one could try to use touch manipulatively. For example, women could use

touch to attract men’s attention, given that a field study, which utilized a bar set-

ting, showed that men displayed stronger courtship intentions when they had been

touched (as opposed to not) by a woman confederate (Guéguen, 2010). Such

efforts would of course backfire if the touch recipients did not like the touch, if

they perceived a manipulative intent, or if the implied personal bonding was too

threatening. Regarding the latter, men in Poland were found to be less likely to

agree to a request from a man who had touched them first, presumably due to

homophobic attitudes (Dolinski, 2010).

Aside from using touch to achieve discrete goals, such as bigger tips or a

favor, people may also use touch for more general impression-management

CHAPTER 8THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 243

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purposes; for example, to convey the impression of strength, dominance, or self-

confidence. Barack Obama often grips another person’supperarmwithone

hand while shaking hands with the other. He may do this to convey an aura of

being in control, though he could also intend to convey warmth and friendliness.

Whatever the motive, the recipient might interpret it as either a welcome expres-

sion of solidarity or an offensive act of interpersonal control. Touch exemplifies

the ambiguous nature of much nonverbal communication: It is hard to know

what the toucher’s intention is, and the toucher may not be able to predict the

recipient’s reaction.

TOUCH AS INTERACTION MANAGEMENT

We try to structure or control conversations, or elements of conversations, in many

ways. These management touches may guide someone without interrupting verbal

conversation; get someone’s attention by touching or tugging at that person’s arm,

or tapping him or her on the shoulder; indicate or mark the beginning (greeting) or

end (good-bye) of a conversation; or fulfill some ritualistic function, such as touch-

ing a baby’s head at a baptism.

TOUCH AS PHYSIOLOGICAL STIMULUS

Obviously, touch is preeminently important at all stages of sexual interaction.

Touch is also a strong but complex stimulus in more mundane interactions. When

people are in experiments in which they are forewarned that they will be touched

in a professional, innocuous manner, researchers find predictable heart rate

decreases (Drescher, Gantt, & Whitehead, 1980), which is said to demonstrate

that touch is intrinsically calming and relates to the evolutionary importance of

mother–infant bonding. However, when touch is unexpected and/or unexplained,

the heart rate goes up; for example, when females were touched unexpectedly on

the wrist for 10 seconds by a male experimenter, a significant increase in heart

rate was found, and, moreover, all subjects showed increases in blood pressure in

this condition compared to a no-touch condition and a condition in which touch

was expected, such as taking a pulse (Nilsen & Vrana, 1998). Such research under-

scores that the impact of touch depends on social–contextual factors and on the

interpretations given to the touch.

TOUCH AS INTERPERSONAL RESPONSIVENESS

Sometimes the meanings attributed to touch concern the level of involvement,

responsiveness, or activity of the communicator (Afifi & Johnson, 1999). Some-

times touch simply means that the intensity of the interaction, or the interactants’

level of involvement in the conversation, is high. Interpersonal responsiveness may

be perceived as positive affect when it is mutually felt, or when one person feels he

or she contributed to the other’s behavior. Probably more than any other nonver-

bal behavior, acts of touch that are perceived as deliberate are extremely salient in

interaction; they are almost certain to be noticed and are likely to produce strong

reactions, either positive or negative.

244 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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TOUCH AS TASK RELATED

There are times when we need to help someone get out of a car, or our hands

touch as the result of passing something back and forth. These touches, associ-

ated with the performance of a task, are similar to what Heslin called functional/

professional touch. As people get older, they may need assistance walking, given

that falling is more likely among the elderly. It is interesting to note here that

even a light touch, something that might be done by aides in a nursing home,

has been shown to reduce postural sway in the elderly (Johannsen, Guzman-

Garcia, & Wing, 2009).

As with any other message, the two communicators may not share a similar

meaning for the touch—or one person may deliberately try to mislead another. A

not unfamiliar example of the latter is when one person touches another in a jok-

ing context but intends the touch to be a step toward intimacy. Such a blending of

functions has also occurred in studies, such as the library study described earlier:

the touch occurred during task performance (namely, while handing the library

card to the patron), but the effect was positive-emotional.

TOUCH AS HEALING

A miraculous cure is one that cannot be explained by recognized medical or phys-

iological therapy. Throughout recorded history, wondrous healings of the sick

and infirm by religious workers, royalty, and other charismatic persons have had

interpersonal touch as a major ingredient. Jesus was said to heal by touch, and he

was often described as being surrounded by crowds hoping for his touch. The

French and English kings were widely believed to be able to accomplish healing

by the laying on of hands. Edward I of England is documented to have touched

938 of his subjects suffering from scrofula in the 28th year of his reign (Older,

1982). In later centuries, including our own, healing touch became the province

of ministers and of others who attribute the healing touch to the power of God.

The healing power of touch in so-called miraculous cases has not been studied in

a controlled way that could establish its effectiveness or the mechanisms by which

it may work. Although it may be difficult to rule out the power of God or some

unknown physical forces, Older (1982) attributes inexplicable cures to psycholog-

ical factors:

•The patient feels a great need for improvement.

•The patient has profound trust in the healer’s powers.

•The patient is part of a group that increases pressure and adds encouragement.

•There is a shared, irrational belief system, usually of a religious nature.

•Emotions are at a high pitch in the patient and in any onlookers.

Currently, the medical and nursing professions have shown renewed interest

in touching as a form of therapy (Borelli & Heidt, 1981; Kerr, Wasserman, &

Moore, 2007; Krieger, 1987). Some touch therapies involving what researchers

call light touch have been shown to reduce pain (Kerr, Wasserman, & Moore,

2007). Massage, long known for its relaxing and pleasurable properties, has pos-

itive effects on other outcomes such as brain activity, attentiveness and alertness,

CHAPTER 8THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 245

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pain relief, anxiety and depression, stress hormones, sleep, appetite, pulmonary

function in asthmatic children, immune function, weight gain in preterm infants,

and other clinical indicators of health (Field, 1998, 2001, 2010; Field, Diego, &

Hernandez-Reif, 2007). It has been suggested that specific neurologic (electroen-

cephalogram) and parasympathetic nervous system activity (e.g., the pressure sti-

mulates the vagal nerve, which lowers physiological arousal and stress

hormones) may be the mechanisms underlying massage’s favorable impact on

people’s well-being (Field, 2010). Even a single massage-therapy session has ben-

eficial effects on anxiety, blood pressure, and heart rate (Moyer, Rounds, &

Hannum, 2004).

Whether owning pets is, in general, associated with positive health outcomes is

not a settled empirical matter (Herzog, 2011; Wells, 2011). Nevertheless, the bene-

ficial effects of touch may partially underlie whatever positive physiological and

psychological effects pets have on us, because our relationships with pets typically

entail high levels of touching (Allen, 2003). Because touch can be so comforting

and physiologically beneficial, researchers in one study were surprised at how little

supportive touching took place between parents and their children with cancer dur-

ing painful medical procedures, such as a lumbar puncture. Based on videotape

analysis, over one-quarter of the children received no supportive touch when they

needed it most (Peterson et al., 2007).

Mental health professionals and physicians debate whether touch should be

incorporated into the therapeutic process (Hetherington, 1998; Smith, Clance, &

Imes, 1998; Young, 2007). Risk of sexual involvement, or simply risk that clients

will take offense, is weighed against the potential value of human physical contact

during stressful moments. Certainly therapists, and medical doctors as well, need to

be highly sensitive to the responses that clients may have to being touched.

According to some, especially in the nursing profession, healing can be accom-

plished even without any actual touch. The method called therapeutic touch (TT)

has been widely claimed as effective for many physical conditions when used by

practitioners who strongly endorse the concept. The TT practitioner moves the

hands above, not on, the patient’s body, and in so doing supposedly influences the

energy field surrounding the patient, with therapeutic benefit. Believers and skeptics

have debated whether this method is any better than a simple placebo, but little

empirical research has been conducted to settle the issue. One study, however, has

shown that TT training resulted in positive shifts in the self-reported health of

nurses (Tang, Tegeler, Larrimore, Cowgill, & Kemper, 2010). Nonetheless, a

study published in a prestigious medical journal casts serious doubt on one of

TT’s basic principles—that the experienced TT practitioner can detect the energy

emanating from another person’s body (Rosa, Rosa, Sarner, & Barrett, 1998).

Experienced TT practitioners serving as subjects were told that the experimenter

would hold her own hand over one of the subject’s hands—blocked from the sub-

ject’s view by a screen—and all the subject had to do was guess which of their

hands (left or right) the experimenter’s hand was over. Much to the subjects’sur-

prise, guess was an apt word, because in fact, their accuracy was no better than

chance, meaning they could not detect an energy field around the experimenter’s

hand. Thus, this well-controlled study strongly suggested that TT adherents are

guided more by faith than science.

246 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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TOUCH AS SYMBOLISM

Perhaps because touch outside of intimate relationships is so infrequent, it is highly

salient when it occurs. Touch can be so fraught with meaning that the act of touch

itself comes to represent the significance of the relationship, ritual, or occasion. The

touch shown in Figure 8-2 between Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian

leader Yasir Arafat on the day they announced an Israeli–Palestinian reconciliation

says more than words could. Ironically, that same handshake apparently sparked

Rabin’s assassin to plan the prime minister’s death (“With a Handshake,”1995).

Sometimes, the symbolism of a touch is experienced at a very personal level

through one’s own experience of touch. We are all familiar with photographs of

screaming fans reaching out to touch a famous rock star or professional athlete

(e.g., the Lambeau Leap). Even in everyday situations, people often find value in

touching someone who is important to them. They might say proudly, “I shook

his hand!”The vicarious symbolic power of touch is sometimes evident even when

the actual touch is one step removed from the actual person, as when one can

touch or possess a remnant or other souvenir of the important person. Even an

autograph fits this description, because the important person has touched the pen

and paper. Certainly, throughout the history of Christianity, it has been very mean-

ingful to claim to own a piece of a saint’s body or clothing.

Figure 8-3 vividly portrays an audience reaching out to touch President Bush.

One study of touch patterns in a state legislature noted that though the governor

was touched by many, he was not seen to touch anyone during the observation

period (Goldstein & Jeffords, 1981). The daughter of the Buddhist Panchen Lama,

a holy man second in importance to the Dalai Lama, recollected a trip to Tibet

when she was 7 years old: “They told me that there were people lining the road

FIGURE 8-2

Rabin and Arafat shaking hands.

Ron Edmonds/AP Photo

CHAPTER 8THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 247

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for fifty miles. Thousands and thousands of people, all wanting to touch me”

(Hilton, 2004). On another trip, at age 17, she told of being exhausted by the

crowds surrounding her. But, she said, “I can’t complain, because it makes them

so happy to see me and to touch me.”But she had to ask her bodyguards to stop

them from lifting up her skirt to get to her legs.

Touching in these scenarios gives touchers the feeling of acquiring something

important: something has rubbed off on them. It does not always seem to matter

whether the significant other person is the toucher or the recipient of the touch.

What is rubbed off can vary, too. Sometimes it is vicarious power: One can feel

more important among peers after touching a famous person. Other times, what is

gained is less definable though no less important: We might say that one feels one

has acquired some piece of the other’s essence through touch. Whatever the valu-

able quality possessed by the other, people feel they have gained a bit of it through

even a very minor touch. This somewhat magical way of thinking has its reverse

side, too, when we feel contaminated by touching or being touched by undesirable

people. It is surely no coincidence that members of the lowest caste in traditional

Hindu society in India were called untouchables.

FIGURE 8-3

The audience is eager to touch President Bush after one of his speeches.

Doug Mills/The New York Times/Redux

248 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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CONTEXTUAL FACTORS IN THE MEANING

OF INTERPERSONAL TOUCH

The meanings of touch depend on many environmental, personal, and contextual

variables, as previous sections have made clear. Indeed, it is likely that much of

the time, the meaning of touch derives from such qualifying variables and not

from the nature of the touch per se. Often, touch intensifies ongoing emotional

experiences rather than conveying specific meanings or messages. The relation-

ship between the interactants provides important context for interpreting the

meaning of touch. A touch on the arm, which might be interpreted as a social/

polite or merely friendly gesture between strangers, may acquire sexual overtones

if a friendly relationship already exists. An embrace may take on different inti-

macy connotations if displayed by two men versus two women (Floyd, 1999), or

if two men embrace on the sports field versus in a bar (Kneidinger, Maple, &

Tross, 2001).

Interpretations of touch are also related to other contextual variables such as

duration, the specific form of the touch, other cues, and other contextual features,

singly and in combination; for example, a touch might seem more intimate if it is

accompanied by other signals, such as prolonged gaze, or if the touch is held an

instant too long, if the environment is private, and so forth. A brief shoulder

touch by waitpersons to their customers resulted in bigger tips, but especially if it

was opposite-gender touching in a bar (Hubbard, Tsuji, Williams, & Seatriz,

2003). Friendship/warmth touching may be more likely to occur in public settings

between people who are not intimate, because the same kind of contact in private

is more likely to take on connotations of love or sexual intimacy. Certain parts of

the body connote greater intimacy than other parts, but intimacy is also linked to

the manner of touch. For instance, a touch and release on any part of the body is

likely to be perceived as less intimate than a touch and hold.

Men and women may also attribute different meanings to similar types of

touch. In a hospital study by Whitcher and Fisher (1979), female nurses touched

patients during an explanation of procedures prior to surgery. Females reacted pos-

itively, showing lower anxiety, more positive preoperative behavior, and more

favorable postoperative physiological responses. But men who were touched in the

same way reacted less positively. A similar result was obtained by Lewis and collea-

gues (1995), who obtained ratings of photographic representations of nurses touch-

ing or not touching patients at the bedside. Men who looked at the photos rated

both male and female nurses as more supportive if they did not touch the patient,

whereas women viewers thought the nurses were more supportive if they did.

Heslin, Nguyen, and Nguyen (1983) found that men and women responded

differently in a questionnaire study regarding people from whom touching would

be considered the greatest invasion of privacy. Women indicated that touch from a

stranger would be the greatest invasion of privacy, whereas men felt that touch

from a same-sex person would be the greatest invasion of privacy. Men reported

themselves to be as comfortable with touch from women strangers as they were

with touch from women friends. Both men and women agreed that the most pleas-

ant type of touch was stroking in sexual areas by an opposite-sex friend. But the

second most pleasant type of touch reported by women was for a male friend to

CHAPTER 8THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 249

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stroke nonsexual areas, whereas the second most pleasant type of touch reported

by men was for a female stranger to stroke sexual areas.

Although sexual touching is often thought of as something people do in

romantic relationships, it appears that it is becoming increasingly common among

people who are just friends (friends with benefits [FWB]) as well as those who are

not even emotionally involved with each other and have no plans to be (a hookup).

One study found that 60 percent of women reported having had a hookup by the

end of their first semester of college (Fielder & Carey, 2010b). Here, sexual touch-

ing (hand to genitals, mouth to genitals, intercourse, etc.) must be mutually under-

stood as a means of achieving sexual satisfaction as opposed to romantic

relationship building or maintenance. This does not mean that the reasons for or

consequences of engaging in this type of touching are the same for men and women.

In an Internet-based study of people in FWB-type relationships, men reported being

more motivated by sex to begin such relationships, whereas women were more

motivated by the emotional connection (Lehmiller, VanderDrift, & Kelly, 2011).

Although both men and women appear to experience more positive than negative

emotional reactions to their FWB relationships, only women in one study reported

increased emotional distress from their hookups involving some form of penetra-

tion (Fielder & Carey, 2010a; Owen & Fincham, 2011). Marital status influences

how men and women interpret different kinds of touches. Over 300 individuals

who were in an intimate relationship, either married or not, reported on what it

meant to them when their significant other touched them on various parts of the

body (Hanzal, Segrin, & Dorros, 2008). Confirming results found by Nguyen,

Heslin, and Nguyen (1976), unmarried men found more pleasantness and warmth

or love in being touched than unmarried women did, but this pattern was reversed

among those who were married—in this group, the women found greater reward in

being touched. Moreover, this result was not due to the difference in age between the

unmarried and married groups.

TOUCH CAN BE A POWERFUL NONCONSCIOUS

FORCE IN INTERACTION

As studies cited earlier indicate, being touched can influence our perceptions,

moods, and behaviors even when it is fleeting, subtle, and possibly even unnoticed.

But just as the influence of touch can be nonconscious on the part of the person

being touched, so too can it be nonconscious on the part of the toucher. Ackerman,

Nocera, and Bargh (2010) showed that the weight or texture of objects being

touched (e.g., holding a light versus heavy clipboard) can nonconsciously influence

how the toucher views people and interactions. Another example can be found in

the phenomenon called facilitated communication, a technique developed for

improving the communication of individuals with autism, mental retardation, and

physical diseases that impair motor abilities and communication, such as cerebral

palsy. Facilitated communication was hailed on several continents as a break-

through in the ability of speech-impaired individuals to communicate, and it

became widely practiced and taught in the 1980s and 1990s (Jacobson, Mulick, &

Schwartz 1995; Spitz, 1997).

250 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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How does facilitated communication work? The technique is based on close

tactile contact between the facilitator and the communicator, as well as a close psy-

chological relationship in which trust is established. The facilitator holds and stead-

ies the communicator’s hands while the communicator types words or sentences on

a keyboard. Using this method, many communication-impaired clients typed out

highly revealing, often eloquent accounts of their feelings and thoughts. To many

observers, it seemed that at last individuals with impairments could overcome their

isolation and break out of their terrible enforced silence. Or so it seemed.

Unfortunately, facilitated communication proved not to reveal the impaired

communicators’thoughts, but rather the thoughts of the facilitators themselves.

Research showed that the communicators were able to answer questions only

when their facilitator knew the question and its answer, and communicators’

responses often seemed much too verbally advanced for their intellectual level. In

fact, communicators could even type out answers to questions when they were not

looking at the keyboard (Kezuka, 1997; Spitz, 1997). Proceeding against a wave of

protest by those who believed in the system, researchers persisted in conducting

controlled experiments that ultimately revealed that often the facilitated communi-

cation effects were due to the facilitator nonconsciously guiding the communica-

tor’s hand to type out what was in the facilitator’s mind. Research showed that

when facilitators were fed incorrect information about the communicator’s back-

ground, and then had to ask the communicator about those same facts, the

answers given reflected the misinformation, not the true answers (Burgess et al.,

1998). Kezuka (1997), using mechanical methods of determining physical force

exerted by facilitators, demonstrated that facilitators did indeed use tiny muscle

movements of their hand, and sometimes facial and other cues, to influence the

position of the communicator’s hand. Thus, the facilitators were the real

communicators.

What makes facilitated communication fascinating and important for behavioral

science is the fact that, in all likelihood, the great majority of facilitators were not

frauds or charlatans but sincere believers (Spitz, 1997). Needless to say, the exposure

of the true nature of facilitated communication was a great disappointment to those

who believed in it. However, the actual—that is, nonconscious—mechanism of its

effect is no less astonishing than the original claims. How could the facilitators be

expressing their own thoughts without being aware of it?

Actually, this is not the first phenomenon involving nonconscious movement

that has been documented. In the 19th century, great interest was paid to pendu-

lums purported to swing in response to mysterious forces. Forked sticks called

dowsing rods are said to suddenly point downward when the person using them

walks over a place where there is underground water (Vogt & Hyman, 2000).

And furniture has suddenly moved or turned, supposedly under the influence of

spirits (Spitz, 1997). In all of these cases, there were no supernatural forces at

work, only strong expectancies that produced motor responses that were out of

awareness. According to Wegner, Fuller, and Sparrow (2003), all of these phenom-

ena depend on “authorship confusion,”whereby the true source of the action is

attributed to a wrong person or object. Read a fascinating example of this in

“Historical Hoofnote.”

CHAPTER 8THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 251

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HISTORICAL HOOFNOTE

Herr von Osten purchased a horse in

Berlin in 1900. When von Osten began

training his horse, Hans, to count by tap-

ping his front hoof, he had no idea that

Hans would soon become one of the

most celebrated horses in history. Hans

was a rapid learner and soon progressed

from counting to adding, multiplying,

dividing, subtracting, and eventually to

solving problems involving factors and frac-

tions. Even more startling, when von Osten

exhibited Hans to public audiences, he

counted the size of the crowd and the num-

ber of people wearing eyeglasses. Respond-

ing only with taps, Hans could tell time, use

a calendar, recall musical pitch, and perform numerous other seemingly fantastic feats. After von Osten taught

Hans an alphabet that could be coded into hoofbeats, the horse could answer virtually any question—oral or

written. It seemed that Hans, a common horse, had complete comprehension of the German language, the ability

to produce the equivalent of words and numerals, and an intelligence beyond that of many human beings.

Even without promotion by the mass media, the word spread quickly, and Hans became known

throughout the world. He was soon dubbed Clever Hans. Because of the profound implications for several

scientific fields, and because some skeptics thought a gimmick was involved, an investigating commission

was established to decide whether deceit tainted Hans’s performances. Professors of psychology and physi-

ology, the director of the Berlin Zoological Garden, a director of a circus, veterinarians, and cavalry officers

were appointed to this commission. An experiment with Hans, in which von Osten was absent, demon-

strated no change in the apparent intelligence of the horse. This was sufficient proof for the commission to

announce that no trickery was involved.

But the appointment of a second commission was the beginning of the end for Clever Hans. Von Osten

was asked to whisper a number in the horse’s left ear while another experimenter whispered a number in

the horse’s right ear. Hans was told to add the two numbers—an answer none of the onlookers, von

Osten, or the experimenter knew. Hans failed. And with further tests, he continued to fail. The experi-

menter, Pfungst (1911/1965), had discovered that Hans could answer a question only if someone in his

visual field knew the answer and was attentive to the situation.

When Hans was given a question, onlookers who knew the answer assumed an expectant posture,

increased their body tension, and bent their heads slightly forward. When Hans reached the correct number

of taps, the onlookers would relax and make a slight upward movement of their heads, which was Hans’s

signal to stop tapping. Evidence suggested that Hans could detect head movements as slight as one-fifth of

a millimeter. Subsequent experiments found that Hans also would cease tapping when a knowledgeable

onlooker raised his or her eyebrows or even showed a dilation of the nostrils.

Hans’s cleverness was not in his ability to verbalize or understand verbal commands but in his ability to

notice and respond to almost imperceptible and unconscious nonverbal movements by those surrounding

him (Spitz, 1997). These unwitting accomplices, like the facilitated communicators described in this chapter,

were completely unaware that their movements were producing the horse’s responses. Indeed, like the peo-

ple with impairments in the facilitated communication paradigm, Clever Hans could not answer questions

correctly unless the questioner or some other onlooker knew the correct response.

UPPA/PhotoShot, Inc.

252 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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SELF-TOUCHING

People also communicate nonverbally through self-touching that includes nail

chewing, skin picking, twirling the hair, hand wringing, lip biting, holding, strok-

ing, and self-grooming activities. It is not clear what psychological functions are

served by these actions, though researchers generally agree that they are more an

out-of-awareness expression of personal needs than reflective of intentional

communication (i.e., more “signs”than “signals”). However, intentional communi-

cation sometimes involves self-touching, as when a sexual come-on includes

self-stroking. Various kinds of self-touching, or self-touching used in different

circumstances, may serve different functions. Figure 8-4 shows several kinds of

self-touching. Morris (1971) offered a list of different kinds of self-touching:

1. Shielding actions. These behaviors usually involve reducing input or output:

for example, covering the mouth or ears with the hands.

2. Cleaning actions. Sometimes we bring our hands up to our head to scratch,

rub, pick, or wipe—for literal cleaning. But sometimes similar self-touching is

used for attending to our appearance: for example, hair grooming, clothes

straightening, and other types of preening. Observations and subsequent inter-

views with people in public restrooms found women engaging in more of this

behavior than men. People in the process of building an intimate relationship

did more preening than those whose intimate relationship had been established

for some time (Daly, Hogg, Sacks, Smith, & Zimring, 1983).

3. Specialized signals. These gestures are used to communicate specific messages,

such as cupping the ear with the hand to signal an inability to hear, or holding

a hand under the chin to signal “I have had it up to here.”

4. Self-intimacies. Self-intimacies, according to Morris, are comforting actions

that generally represent nonconsciously reproduced acts of being touched by

someone else. They may involve holding one’s own hands, arm folding, leg

crossing, masturbation, and so on. Some actions, he maintains, are more likely

to be performed by women than men, such as the head-lowered-on-to-the-

shoulder posture and leg hugging. Thus, self-touching can be a substitute for

comfort that might otherwise be provided by others.

Some self-touching behaviors are what Ekman and Friesen (1972) called adap-

tors or self-manipulators. As the term implies, they are behavioral adaptations in

response to certain situations. There is consensus that adaptors are generally associ-

ated with negative feelings. Some useful classifications exist for different types of

adaptors, which include both the probable referent for the behavior—self, other,

or object—and the type of behavior, such as scratching or rubbing.

Research on psychiatric patients has found that self-adaptors increase as a per-

son’s psychological discomfort, anxiety, or depression gets worse (Ekman &

Friesen, 1972; Freedman, 1972; Freedman, Blass, Rifkin, & Quitkin, 1973;

Freedman & Hoffman, 1967; Waxer, 1977). If, however, the anxiety level is too

high, a person may freeze, engaging in little movement at all. The finding that self-

adaptors also were associated with guilt feelings in the patients studied illuminates

one aspect of the deception research we review in Chapter 12. Ekman and Friesen

(1972) also discovered picking and scratching self-adaptors to be related to a

CHAPTER 8THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 253

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FIGURE 8-4

Self-touching.

Courtesy of Judith A. Hall

Tom Morrison/Getty Images

Courtesy of Judith A. Hall

DEX IMAGE/Getty Images

254 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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person’s hostility and suspiciousness. Theoretically, this picking and scratching is a

manifestation of aggression against oneself or aggression felt for another person

that is directed inward. Other speculations and hypotheses about self-adaptors

include the possibility that rubbing is used to give self-assurance, that covering the

eyes is associated with shame or guilt, that self-grooming shows concern for one’s

self-presentation, or that self-touching is an outlet for nervous energy.

A number of studies have indicated that self-touching is associated with situa-

tional anxiety or stress. This is the case in baboons as well as in people (Castles,

Whitens, & Aureli, 1999). Ekman and Friesen (1974a) asked people to watch one

of two films, one highly stressful and the other quite pleasant. Viewers were then

instructed to describe the film as pleasant to an interviewer. Thus, those watching

the stressful film had to deceive, which in itself can be considered stressful. Partici-

pants in the second group engaged in more self-touch than those simply describing

the pleasant film as pleasant. In a study of physician–patient communication,

patients were more likely to touch their bodies when talking about anxiety-

producing hidden agendas than when talking about the primary complaint (Shreve,

Harrigan, Kues, & Kagas, 1988).

Interracial interaction is another context in which stress can produce self-

touching. Olson and Fazio (2007) coded any kind of self-manipulation—such as

scratching the head, playing with the hair, or kneading the hands—by white partici-

pants when interacting with black and white confederates. The participants’general

racial attitudes were measured as well as their attitudes about the particular black

confederate they had interacted with. When these two kinds of attitudes were

discordant—such as when their general attitude was negative, but their attitude

toward the particular black confederate was positive—participants engaged in signifi-

cantly higher levels of self-touching. This study well illustrates the complexity of

interpreting the meaning of nonverbal communication. Though some authors have

emphasized prejudiced individuals’communication of hostile attitudes through non-

verbal behaviors, this study reminds us that nonverbal behavior can also be a sign

of discomfort or internal conflict, and not due to interpersonal negativity per se.

Self-touching is also greater in people who are chronically anxious, a variable

known as trait anxiety, such as among people who are shy but also have a desire to

be sociable (Cheek & Buss, 1981). When trait anxiety is measured indirectly, using a

reaction-time task, it predicts self-touching and other behavioral signs of anxiety bet-

ter than an explicit self-report does. Perhaps on an explicit self-report, highly anxious

people deny their anxiety or are not fully aware of it (Egloff & Schmukle, 2002). An

interesting question is whether the self-touching associated with anxiety is simply an

indicator that anxiety is occurring, or whether such touching actually relieves stress.

Another source of body-focused movements is cognitive, or information-

processing, demand. When engaged in a monologue, people touched themselves

more than when simply sitting still. Heaven and McBrayer (2000) showed that

people touched themselves more when answering questions about a passage they

had heard than when simply listening to it. When asked to read the names of col-

ors that were printed in contradictory colors, such as the word red printed in blue,

people touched themselves more than if they were given color-consistent color

names to read (Kenner, 1993). These results suggest that mental concentration and

stress can lead to more self-touching.

CHAPTER 8THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 255

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Though not much direct evidence exists for how aware people are of their self-

touching, it is generally assumed that, compared to some other nonverbal beha-

viors, self-touching is low in awareness. Hall, Murphy, and Schmid Mast (2007)

found that, indeed, when asked how much of several nonverbal behaviors they

engaged in during a videotaped interaction, people were least accurate in remem-

bering how much they had engaged in self-touching, though they did remember

their self-touching at levels better than chance.

The concept of adaptors can be extended to behaviors other than self-touching.

Such behaviors are theorized to have been learned in conjunction with our early

experiences with interpersonal relations: giving and taking from another, attacking

or protecting, establishing closeness or withdrawing, and so forth. Ekman believes

that restless movements of the hands and feet, which have typically been consid-

ered indicators of anxiety, may be residues of adaptors necessary for flight from an

interaction.

Object-adaptors involve the manipulation of objects for no obvious functional

purpose. One example is rolling a paper clip around with your fingers. Object-

adaptor behaviors also may be derived from the performance of some instrumental

task, such as writing with a pencil or smoking. Some people engage in these man-

nerisms more than others. Although people are typically unaware of performing

self-adaptor behaviors, they are probably more aware of object-adaptors. These

movements are often learned later in life, and fewer social taboos seem to be asso-

ciated with them. As with self-adaptors, object-adaptors are likely to be associated

with anxiety, stress, or cognitive load.

Because there are social constraints on displaying some self-adaptors, they are

more often seen when a person is alone. At any rate, in public we would not expect

to see the full act. As an example, alone you might pick your nose without inhibi-

tion, but when around other people, you may just touch your nose or rub it

casually.

Individual and group differences in self-touching have been found. In a study

of children from four countries, those from England and Australia engaged in sig-

nificantly less self-touching during experimental tasks than did Italian children and

French-speaking children in Belgium. Possibly, touching of other people may paral-

lel these self-touching differences across these cultures. Also in those samples, sig-

nificant individual variation was revealed, meaning that some children were

consistently more likely to touch themselves during a variety of experimental tasks

(Kenner, 1993). Another group difference relates to gender: Women touch them-

selves in interpersonal interaction more than men do (Hall, 1984). It is not clear

to what extent this may reflect greater social anxiety or arousal on the part of

females, a heightened self-consciousness about appearance, or the simple fact that

women’s clothes and hair more often demand readjustment.

SUMMARY

Our first information about ourselves, others,

and our environment probably comes from

touching. The act of touching or being touched

can have a powerful impact on our response to a

situation, even if that touch was unintentional. In

some cases, touching is the most effective method

for communicating; in others, it can elicit nega-

tive or hostile reactions. The meanings we attach

256 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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to touching behavior vary according to what

body part is touched, how long the touch lasts,

the strength of the touch, the method of the

touch, and the frequency of the touch. Touch

also means different things in different environ-

ments—institutions, airports, and so on—and

varies with communicators’age, gender, culture,

personality, and relationship. Indications are that

children in the United States touch more than

adults do, but there seems to be a decreasing

amount of touch from kindergarten through

junior high school. Investigators agree that early

experiences with touch are crucial for later

adjustment.

The common types of interpersonal touching

and self-touching may communicate a variety of

messages that include influence, positive affect,

negative affect, play, interpersonal responsive-

ness, interaction management, and task require-

ments. Touch can have powerful symbolism, and

its possible healing and therapeutic power has

received much attention throughout history and

in modern research laboratories. Touching can

also intensify whatever emotional experience is

occurring. Touch can be a powerful source of

behavioral influence, and both the toucher and

the recipient of touch may be unaware of its

occurrence and effects.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Think of a person you know personally who

does not like touching or being touched.

What analysis can you offer for this person’s

characteristic? How much do you think it

reflects personal history and personality ver-

sus social and cultural norms?

2. What do you think about the ethics of using

touch to achieve compliance or a favor from

someone? Is it different from using persua-

sive language or using other forms of nonver-

bal communication, such as smiling or

generally “being nice”?

3. Most studies find that touch is a rather infre-

quent event. Do you think this is correct?

Discuss exceptions to this generalization.

Why do you think touch might seem to be

not very common?

4. Sometimes people are eager to touch others

because they gain something of psychological

value by doing so, yet people often feel vio-

lated by being touched. Discuss these differ-

ent perspectives on the phenomenon of

touch.

5. It has been suggested that sometimes a

woman’s friendly intention touch is misper-

ceived by a man as being a sexual invitation.

Have you ever had such an experience? Do

you think this is a true phenomenon?

6. For a day, pay close attention to your own

and others’use of self-touching. Try to ana-

lyze the circumstances under which people

engage in this behavior. Note what brings it

on, what situations it occurs in, and what

kind of people do it more or do it less. What

kind of psychological function do you think

self-touching serves?

CHAPTER 8THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 257

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THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN

COMMUNICATION

[CHAPTER9]

The face is rich in communicative potential. It is a primary site for communication

of emotional states, it reflects interpersonal attitudes, it provides nonverbal feed-

back on the comments of others, and some scholars say it is the primary source of

communicative information next to human speech. For these reasons, and because

of the face’s visibility, we pay a great deal of attention to the messages we receive

from the faces of others. Frequently, we rely heavily on facial cues when making

important interpersonal judgments. This begins when, as infants, we take special

interest in the huge face peering over our crib and tending to our needs. Most of

the research on facial expressions and various components of the face has focused

on the display and interpretation of emotional signals. Although this is the major

focus of this chapter, we also emphasize that the face may be the basis for judging

another person’s personality, and it can—and does—provide information on much

more than our emotional state.

THE FACE AND PERSONALITY JUDGMENTS

The human face and its features come in many sizes and shapes. As reviewed in

Chapter 6, people have long believed that certain personality or character traits

can be judged from the shape or features of a person’s face. For example, high

foreheads are believed to reveal intelligence, thin lips conscientiousness, and thick

lips sexiness (Secord, Dukes, & Bevan, 1959). Facial primacy, or the tendency to

Your face, my thane, is a book where men may read strange matters.

—Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I

258

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give more weight to the face than to other communication channels, may stem in

part from these facial stereotypes.

But facial primacy probably stems even more from the dynamic nature of the

face—its ability to make practically an infinite number of expressions. Many differ-

ent muscles are used routinely in making facial expressions (Rinn, 1984). The look

of a person’s face is due in part to the genetic blueprint that endows it with certain

physical features, in part to transient moods that stimulate the muscles to move in

distinctive ways, and in part to the lingering imprint of chronically held expressions

that seem to set in and become virtually permanent over the years. The dynamic

face is the subject of the present chapter.

People make personality attributions based on facial expressions (Knutson,

1996). For example, a person who smiles at us warmly upon introduction is imme-

diately perceived to be nice. Likewise, we think a sour-faced old man is mean and

selfish. Little research exists on the validity of such stereotypes, though. It is cer-

tainly possible that the person with the warm smile is a cutthroat manipulator and

the mean-looking man is a tenderhearted soul. One study supporting the validity of

facial expression stereotypes found that college students believe facially expressive

individuals are more confident and likable, and indeed, in a sample of college

women, those with more expressive faces were more extraverted, according to sev-

eral self-report scales (Riggio & Friedman, 1986). Thus, there can be a kernel of

truth to some facial-expression-based stereotypes.

Another study lending support to the validity of facial-expression-based stereo-

types was done by Harker and Keltner (2001). The more women’s faces showed

positive emotional expression in their college yearbook pictures, the more observers

of the pictures thought the women would be rewarding to interact with. And

indeed, the women who had more positive expressions had more affiliative person-

alities and reported experiencing more positive affect, not only at age 21, but also

decades later, and they were more likely to be married by age 27 than women

who had less positive yearbook photos.

Research does not always support the validity of facial-expression-based

stereotypes, however. Gifford (1994) studied self-reported personality, others’

impressions of personality, and various nonverbal cues emitted during interaction.

Although smiling was positively related to observers’impressions of extraversion,

agreeableness and ingenuousness, smiling was not related to the targets’own per-

sonality ratings for any of these traits.

THE FACE AND INTERACTION MANAGEMENT

Our faces also are used to facilitate and inhibit responses in daily interaction. Parts

of the face are used to:

1. Open and close channels of communication

2. Complement or qualify verbal and/or nonverbal responses

3. Replace speech

Behaviors can, of course, serve several functions simultaneously. For example, a

yawn may replace the spoken message “I’m bored”and also may serve to shut

down other channels of communication, such as eye contact.

CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 259

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CHANNEL CONTROL

When we want a speaking turn, we sometimes open our mouths in readiness to

talk, which is often accompanied by an inspiration of breath. Others notice such

signals and decide whether to ignore or respect them. As noted in Chapter 2, the

eyebrow flash found in greeting rituals, which is frequently accompanied by a

smile, is another facial cue that signals a desire to interact. Interestingly, smiles

also are found in situations in which there is a desire to close the channels of com-

munication; for example, a smile of appeasement as a person backs away from

someone threatening physical harm. Smiling and winking, at least in popular

stereotypes, also are used to flirt with others—an invitation that not only opens

the channels of communication but also suggests the type of interaction desired.

Although we usually think of smiles as showing emotion or attitudes, they

actually have many complex functions. Brunner (1979) showed that smiles serve

as “listener responses”or “back channels”in conversation in that they signal

attentiveness and involvement just as head nods, “uh-huh,”and “yeah”do. These

smiles do not indicate joy or happiness in the sender but are meant to facilitate and

encourage the other person’s speech. These cues achieve channel control by keeping

channels open.

COMPLEMENTING OR QUALIFYING OTHER BEHAVIOR

In normal conversational give and take, there are instances when we wish to under-

line, magnify, minimize, or contradict messages. The speaker or listener may give

these signals. A sad verbal message may acquire added emphasis with eyebrow

movements that normally accompany the expression of sadness. A smile may tem-

per a message that could otherwise be interpreted as negative. The hand emblem

for A-OK may be accompanied by a wink, leaving little doubt that approval is

being communicated. Thus, facial cues can combine with other cues to avoid con-

fusion and magnify or qualify our messages.

REPLACING SPOKEN MESSAGES

Ekman and Friesen (1975) identified what they call facial emblems. Like hand

emblems, these displays have a fairly consistent verbal translation. Facial emblems

are different from the actual emotional expressions in that the sender is trying to

talk about an emotion while indicating he or she is not actually feeling it. These

facial emblems usually occur in contexts not likely to trigger the actual emotion;

they are usually held for a longer or shorter time than the actual expression and

are usually performed by using only part of the face. When you drop your jaw

and hold your mouth open without displaying other features of the surprise expres-

sion, you may be saying that the other person’s comment is surprising or that you

were dumbfounded by what was said. Widened eyes without other features of the

surprise and fear expressions may serve the same purpose as a verbal “wow!”If

you want to comment nonverbally on your disgust for a situation, a nose wrinkle

or raising one side of your upper lip should get your message across. Sometimes

one or both eyebrows communicate “I’m puzzled”or “I doubt that.”Other facial

260 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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messages with common verbal translations that are not associated with expressions

of emotion include the “You know what I mean”wink and sticking your tongue

out to convey insult or disapproval (Smith, Chase, & Lieblich, 1974).

Facial movements play an important role in managing conversation (Bavelas &

Chovil, 1997; Chovil, 1991/1992). According to Chovil, the most frequent function

is syntactic display. Syntactic facial displays act as markers, functioning as visible

punctuation for words and clauses; they are directed toward the organizational

structure of the conversation to mark beginnings, endings, restarts, continuations,

and emphasis. Raising and lowering the eyebrows is a central activity in syntactic

displays. Facial actions made by a speaker that are directly connected with the con-

tent of what is being said are called semantic displays. These displays may be

redundant with the verbal behavior or they may involve additional commentary

on the spoken words, such as personal reactions to what is being said. The face

also provides listener responses, as mentioned earlier. These are primarily facial dis-

plays that facilitate the flow of interaction but also include those that give personal

reactions and seemingly empathic displays in the form of behavioral mimicry.

The preceding discussion provides only a cursory overview of how the face is

used in managing interpersonal interactions. We did not deal with concomitant

gaze behavior and other subtle movements such as head tilts. We talked about

smiles as if there were only one variety. Brannigan and Humphries (1972) have

identified nine smiles, representing various types and degrees of intensity, many of

which seem to occur in distinctly separate situations. Ekman and Friesen (1978),

using an anatomically based coding system we will describe shortly, have found

over 100 distinctly different human smiles. Most recently, researchers have distin-

guished between smiles that are more and less likely to be indicative of true positive

affect, as discussed later in this chapter.

THE FACE AND EXPRESSIONS OF EMOTION

The intellectual roots of our modern interest in facial expression stem from the

mid-19th century. Charles Darwin’sThe Expression of the Emotions in Man and

Animals (1872), although not as famous as his other writings on natural selection,

was a major work of theory and empirical observation that largely focused on the

face (Ekman & Oster, 1982). To Darwin, the study of emotional expression was

closely tied to his case for evolution, for he held that the capacity to communicate

through nonverbal signals had evolved just as the brain and skeleton had. The face

becomes increasingly mobile as one moves up the phylogenetic ladder. In many ani-

mals, the face is a fixed mask with little to no capacity for mobility, but in primates

we see a great variety of expressions (Redican, 1982). Because it would support his

theory of evolution, Darwin considered it extremely important to document simi-

larities in the nature of emotional expression across species and across human cul-

tures. Several strands of contemporary facial research can be traced to Darwin’s

insights, including conducting judgment studies to find out what meanings obser-

vers ascribe to different expressions, undertaking cross-cultural studies, studying

the movements of particular facial muscles, and testing the hypothesis that making

facial expressions can intensify the expressor’s experience of emotion. We review

each of these topics here.

CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 261

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DISPLAY RULES AND FACIAL EMOTION EXPRESSION

Consider the following situations:

1. A student who feels sure he is doing “C”work is told by his instructor that he

is doing “A”work. His immediate reaction is total surprise, probably followed

by glee. But how does he react? His face shows mild surprise, and he com-

ments that he thought he was doing pretty good work in the course.

2. A poker player draws her fourth ace in a game with no wild cards. Her face

would lead the other players to believe she was unmoved.

3. A woman receives a holiday present that she likes, but it is nothing spectacu-

lar. Her facial expression and comments, however, lead the giver to believe it

was the only thing she ever wanted in her entire life.

4. The husband of a fledgling executive is forced to attend the boss’s party and is

told explicitly that his behavior will have a profound impact on the promotion

of his spouse. He is nervous and also annoyed. But, according to those who

describe the party later, he was the life of the party—happy, carefree, and

relaxed.

These four examples illustrate certain display rules we tend to follow (Ekman &

Friesen, 1969b). The student illustrated a deintensified affect—strong surprise was

made to look like mild surprise. The poker player was trying to neutralize her

feelings to make it appear there was no emotion at all. The person reacting to the

holiday present tried to make mild happiness appear to be strong happiness—an

overintensification of the affect. The husband of the fledgling executive was trying

to mask feelings of tension or annoyance with happiness and confidence. These

display rules are learned, but we do not always use them at a conscious level of

awareness. We learn culturally prescribed norms for when and how much emotion

to display. We also develop personal display rules based on our needs or perhaps

the demands of our occupation (e.g., as a politician or salesperson). We learn that

some affect displays are appropriate in some places but not others, for some status

and role positions but not others, and for one sex but not the other.

The existence of display rules helps explain why some anthropologists have

believed that emotions are expressed in sharply different ways from culture to cul-

ture. Although the same potential for showing a particular facial expression of

emotion may exist in all humans, such as with anger, cultural upbringing influences

when and how it is shown (Matsumoto, Yoo, & Chung, 2010). Another example

concerns grief. In one society, people may weep and moan at a funeral, whereas in

another they may celebrate with feast and dance. However, the underlying emo-

tion, grief, is experienced and likely expressed similarly in private. The difference

is that in public, the cultural norms—display rules—regulate behavior. In the first

society, the rule says “Show how sad you are,”but in the second, it says “Affirm

social bonds”or “Show hope for the future.”

The topic of deception is taken up in a later chapter, but let us say here that

the face, along with other nonverbal cues, can certainly be used to deceive others

about our feelings and thoughts. Deception may be driven by situational factors,

such as when a customer does not want a salesperson to know how much he or

she really wants a costly product (Puccinelli, Motyka, & Grewal, 2010). The line

262 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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between deception and display rules can be fuzzy, but in general it can be said

that display rules, because they are shared, reflect a collective understanding of

socially appropriate behavior, whereas deception is generally considered to be

done for a person’s own self-advantage and to the disadvantage of others. There-

fore, basing our nonverbal behavior on display rules tends to be looked on with

approval, as an indication of social skill or maturity, whereas deception is gener-

ally disapproved of.

Display rules do not always have to be socially defined and shared. Such differ-

ences may stem from a person’s level of expressiveness and be related to neurologic

differences (Kunz et al., 2011). People also can have their own idiosyncratic

“rules”for expression. Ekman and Friesen (1975) developed a classification system

for various styles of facial expressions. The styles are heavily based on personal dis-

play rules and represent extremes. A style may be displayed in a less extreme fash-

ion in some situations or at certain times in the person’s life, but some people

manifest a given style with consistency. These styles include the following:

1. The withholder. The face inhibits expressions of actual feeling states. There is

little facial movement.

2. The revealer. This style is the opposite of the withholder. The face of the

person who lets it all hang out leaves little doubt how the person

feels—continually.

3. The unwitting expressor. This pattern usually pertains to a limited number of

expressions that a person thought were masked, hence this person might ask,

incredulously, “How did you know I was angry?”

4. The blanked expressor. In this style, the person is convinced an emotion is

being portrayed, but others see only a blank face.

5. The substitute expressor. Here, the facial expression shows an emotion other

than the one the person thinks is being displayed.

6. The frozen-affect expressor. This style manifests at least part of an emotional

display at all times. Some people are born with a facial configuration that in a

relaxed, neutral state shows the down-turned mouth associated with sadness;

others habitually experience an emotion so much that traces of the emotional

display are permanently etched into the face. (This is an idea that Darwin

proposed.)

Self-presentational desires can also produce distinctive styles of facial expres-

sion. Former President Clinton often used a smile we call his brave smile (Figure 9-1).

It is not a pure expression of happiness, as our discussion of blends and “felt”smiles

later in this chapter makes clear. Rather, we think Clinton was trying to convey a

complex mixture of pride, determination, concern, and modesty with the combination

of the paradoxically down-turned mouth, the set chin, and the “smile wrinkles”

around the eyes.

The preceding discussion of display rules and styles of emotional facial expres-

sion demonstrates that we have considerable control over our facial expressions,

and this control is manifested in a variety of ways. Although we can successfully

present facial messages that we do not feel, sometimes we lie imperfectly by enact-

ing an expression at the wrong time; by enacting it too often or for too long, as

when we insincerely display a smile too long; or by using various facial muscles

CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 263

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inappropriately. These factors may help us separate genuine emotions from pseu-

doexpressions of emotion on the face.

People undeniably are aware of the communicative potential of the face and

tend to monitor it carefully by inhibiting or exhibiting when desired. With the con-

stant feedback we receive about our facial expressions, we become rather proficient

at controlling them. We are also more accurate in reporting our facial expressions

than other head or body movements (Hall, Murphy, & Schmid Mast, 2007).

The way we experience emotions can be quite complex. Sometimes we move

rapidly from one emotion to another. For example, people reporting the feeling of

jealousy indicate that the “jealous flash may move from shock and numbness to

desolate pain to rage and anger to moral outrage in a very brief time”(Ellis &

Weinstein, 1986). Sometimes we are not sure what emotion we are feeling, and at

other times, we seem to feel many emotions at once. Simultaneously felt emotions

may even be contradictory, as when one is both attracted and repulsed by a grisly

accident scene. When we experience more than one emotion, we sometimes try to

control one while we deal with the other. These are only some of the many ways

we experience emotions (Ellis, 1991).

Because emotional experience is complex, understanding emotion through

facial expression is correspondingly difficult. People do not always portray pure or

single emotional states, in which all the parts of the face show a single emotion.

Instead, the face conveys multiple emotions. These are called affect blends and

may appear on the face in numerous ways. For example, one emotion is suggested

FIGURE 9-1

Former President Clinton’s“brave”smile.

Reuters/CORBIS

264 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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by one facial area, and another is suggested by another area, as when brows are

raised as in surprise and lips are pressed as in anger. Or two different emotions

are shown in one part of the face, as when one brow is raised as in surprise, and

the other is lowered as in anger. Such displays may merely confuse a viewer, or

they may convey a new meaning that is different from either of the elements. The

brows just described might, for example, convey skepticism.

Figure 9-2 shows two examples of facial blends. One photograph shows a

blend of happiness, evidenced by a smiling movement in the mouth area, and also

surprise, evidenced by the raised eyebrows and forehead, wide eyes, and a slight

dropping of the jaw. Such an expression could occur if you thought you were

going to get an “F”on an exam, but you received an “A”instead. In the other

photograph, the eyebrow, forehead, and eye area show anger while the mouth

shows sadness. This combination might occur if your instructor told you that your

grade on an exam you considered unfair was an “F.”You feel sad about the low

grade and angry at the instructor.

A final note about the complexity of faces concerns what Haggard and Isaacs

(1966) called micromomentary facial expressions. While searching for indications

of nonverbal communication between therapist and patient, they ran films at slow

motion and noticed that the expression on the patient’s face would sometimes

change dramatically—from a smile to a grimace to a smile, for example—within a

few frames of the film. Further analysis revealed that when they ran the films at

4 frames per second, instead of the normal 24 frames per second, 2.5 times as

many changes of expression could be discerned. One hypothesis is that these micro-

momentary expressions reveal actual emotional states but are condensed in time

FIGURE 9-2

Facial blends.

Paul Ekman, Ph.D.

CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 265

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because of repressive processes. They are often incompatible with both the

apparent expression and the patient’s words. One patient, saying nice things about

a friend, had a seemingly pleasant facial expression; however, slow-motion film

showed a wave of anger cross her face. Although agreeing that micromomentary

expressions may show conflict, repression, or efforts to conceal an emotion,

Ekman, Friesen, and Ellsworth (1982) actually found them to be “very rare events”

based on extensive analysis of facial movements. However, this does not mean they

do not have an impact, possibly a subliminal one, when they occur.

THE FACIAL EMOTION CONTROVERSY

One tradition, originating with Darwin and associated today with the work of Paul

Ekman and Carroll Izard, emphasizes the close connection between facial displays

of emotion and concurrently felt emotions with a corresponding emphasis on

emotion-expressive display linkages as being biologically grounded. This approach

has fueled ambitious programs of cross-cultural research on the recognition of

facial expression, as discussed in Chapter 2 and also later in this chapter. A sim-

plistic version of such a theoretical position would hold that, at least for certain

basic emotions, the emotion always produces a certain expression, which could be

a single muscle movement or a complex pattern of movements, and conversely that

this expression always signifies the occurrence of its associated emotion. According

to such a view, facial expressions are always a readout—an honest, unpremedi-

tated, uncontrolled indication—of internal emotional states.

A bit of reflection on everyday experience should make the reader skeptical of

such a view, however, and it is unlikely that any theorist holds such an extreme

position. As we discussed in the previous section, people can feign emotions by

willfully putting on different expressions. They also are sensitive to situations in

which it would be inappropriate to show certain expressions; for example, a win-

ner who shows too much happiness could be seen as gloating. A rising tide of

research now shows that a purely spontaneous nonverbal readout of emotional

states may be a rarer event than some think (Bonanno & Keltner, 2004; Russell,

Bachorowski, & Fernández-Dols, 2003). The term loosely coupled is used to

describe emotion and expression systems that coincide only occasionally or under

certain circumstances.

Many studies support this argument that expressions are not a perfect window

into emotional experience. Researchers have sought to create or observe situations

in which the experience of an emotion can be confirmed, so that they can see

what expressions are produced. People bowling with friends have been observed in

the United States and Spain. After a good roll, and at other moments when they

reported feeling happy, bowlers smiled much more when facing their friends than

when facing the pins. Similarly, soccer fans watching a match on television smiled

much more during happy moments when orienting directly to their friends than

during happy moments when they were not interacting with them directly. During

their noninteractive happy moments, they showed expressions indicative of several

different emotions not shown in the interactive happy moments (Fernández-Dols &

Ruiz-Belda, 1997; Kraut & Johnston, 1979; Ruiz-Belda, Fernández-Dols, Carrera, &

266 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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Barchard, 2003). Thus, a person can be very happy yet not show it in a prototypi-

cally “happy”facial expression.

Further evidence that facial expression and experienced emotion are only

loosely coupled, and that the nature of the social situation is a strong determinant

of what is displayed on the face, is that facial motor mimicry—displaying what

another person is feeling, such as wincing when a friend stubs his toe—decreases

when no one is there to see the facial display (Bavelas, Black, Lemery, & Mullett,

1986; Chovil, 1991). Furthermore, college students watching emotionally provok-

ing slides were more facially expressive when they watched with a friend as

opposed to a watching with a stranger (Wagner & Smith, 1991), and college stu-

dents recounting positive and negative experiences showed facial expressions that

inconsistently matched their reported affect (Lee & Wagner, 2002). At the Olympic

Games, gold medal winners were filmed at three moments: while standing behind

the podium away from public view, while standing on the podium interacting with

authorities and the public, and while standing on the podium facing the flagpoles

and listening to their national anthem (Fernández-Dols & Ruiz-Belda, 1995).

Although their feelings of happiness probably did not vary across these three

closely spaced periods, the winners smiled the most during the public-interactive

period, suggesting again that a facial expression is not due solely to the emotion

being experienced.

Audience effects such as these may even occur when a person is alone and

behaving spontaneously, for even then a person may respond to fantasies or

memories of social interaction. In support of this notion, Fridlund (1991) found

that college students watching a pleasantfilmsmiledmorewhenwatchingwitha

friend than when watching alone. But students who watched the film in a differ-

ent room from their friend and were aware that the friend was watching the

same film also smiled more than students who watched the film alone. Thus,

even the imagined presence or experience of others may serve to stimulate or

facilitate facial displays.

The impact of the audience on facial displays of emotion is also influenced

by the disposition of the person experiencing the emotion. People vary with

respect to how negatively oriented they are to pain, from low to high catastro-

phizing. Vervoort and colleagues (2011) had children undergo the cold pressor

pain task twice (i.e., dipping a hand in a container of very cold water for a min-

ute, which is moderately painful), once when the children thought they were

alone and once when they thought a parent was watching them. There was a

3-minute parent–child interaction in between the two tasks. The researchers

noted that higher levels of facial expressions of pain were observed when parents

did not talk about the child’spain,butonlyamonghigh-catastrophizingchildren;for

low-catastrophizing children, pain expressions were not related to parental talk

about pain. This suggests that high-catastrophizing children’s pain expressions were

influenced by how a parent was responding to their experience of pain.

Fridlund’s (1994, 1997) behavioral ecology theory of facial expression asserts

that facial expressions are virtually never simply emotional and are, instead, always

enacted for social purposes. In Fridlund’s view, spontaneous expression of emotion

would not have been a selected trait during evolution because showing all one’s

CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 267

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feelings would too often have not served the expressor’s interest, and it could

possibly have even served the interests of rivals by depriving the expressor of the

ability to deceive. Fridlund’s argument that facial expressions are meant to commu-

nicate rather than to simply reveal is consistent with many examples of functional

expressive behavior in the animal kingdom, as well as with everyday observation

of human interaction.

However, most researchers appear not to accept the extreme position that

facial expressions are mainly messages and are hardly ever purely spontaneous

readouts of one’s emotional life. There are certainly many instances when our

faces show feelings without our being aware of it—sometimes feelings that we

would very much have wanted to conceal. The fact that audience presence effects

can sometimes work in reverse, with people showing more facial expressions when

alone than with others present, suggests that people do indeed make spontaneous

emotional expressions (Buck, 1984, 1991; Wagner & Lee, 1999). Facial expressions

are not always only for social communication purposes.

Thus far, the approach described for testing whether expressions match inner

feelings involves comparing expressions in different social circumstances. Another

way of asking this question is to compare people’s expressions to what they say

about their emotional states. When viewers were asked about their emotions during

neutral or scary film excerpts, almost no matching occurred (Fernández-Dols &

Ruiz-Belda, 1997)—only 2 of 35 viewers who reported a basic emotion showed

the expression that theoretically should have been produced by that emotion,

and 3 showed expressions that suggested entirely different emotions from those

reported.

Similarly, Carroll and Russell (1997) first obtained good agreement from

viewers on which emotions were being expressed in over 100 scenes by actors in

Hollywood movies, and then they conducted a detailed analysis of the actors’

faces. Only for happy episodes did the expected “happy”pattern of facial move-

ments occur. For other emotions, although particular expected movements—such

as lowered brows in angry episodes—occurred more often than chance might

dictate, little evidence supported the idea that whole prototypical patterns of

expression actually took place. Considering that actors are likely to make more

stereotyped expressions than people in real life, these results give a strong indication

that the face and emotion do not necessarily have a close correspondence.

MEASURING THE FACE

ANATOMICAL DESCRIPTION For many years, descriptions of facial movements tended

to be impressionistic or idiosyncratic (Ekman, 1982; Rinn, 1984). This changed

dramatically with the work of Carroll Izard (1979) and of Paul Ekman and

Wallace Friesen (1978), who independently developed precise systems for describ-

ing facial action based on muscle movements. Izard’s work has focused on infant

expressions. The Ekman–Friesen Facial Action Coding System (FACS) has been

applied more generally and appears to be the most widely adopted. In this context,

the term widely is relative because learning a system comprehensive enough to

describe nearly any combination of muscle movements requires many hours of

training and practice and is extremely time consuming to apply.

268 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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Ekman and Friesen developed the FACS by painstakingly learning how

to move all their facial muscles and by studying anatomy texts. They studied

the faces of other people who had learned how to control specific muscles and

considered what movements an observer could reliably distinguish—important

because observers would be the data-gatherers. These movements were called

action units. Sometimes an action unit involves more than one muscle, if those

muscles always work in tandem or if an observer cannot see the difference.

Altogether, the FACS can identify over 40 distinct action units in the face.

For illustration, Figure 9-3 presents the action units identified by Ekman (1979)

for the brow and forehead. Altogether, seven different muscles can influence this

region of the face.

The FACS allows emotion researchers to describe objectively what movements

have occurred on the face, and further work with this system allows a face to be

categorized as showing a given emotion based on extensive data relating those

movements to other criteria, mainly observers’judgments of facial expressions.

Through years of collecting such judgments, Ekman and his colleagues developed

a catalogue of prototypical movements associated with seven different judged

emotions. For example, Ekman and Friesen (1978) determined that in the brow/

forehead region (shown in Figure 9-3), action units 1 or 1 þ4occurinsadness,along

with associated movements across the rest of the face. In surprise, we see 1 þ2; in

fear, 1 þ2þ4; in anger, 4; and so forth.

FIGURE 9-3

Action units for the brow/forehead.

Source: From P. Ekman, “About Brows: Emotional and Conversational Signals”in von Cranach, et al., eds.

Human Ethology, p. 174. Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 269

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Recall that we discussed the role of the face in interaction management. Ekman

tells us how the brow/forehead area contributes to these conversational signals as well:

•Accent a word, 1 þ2 (Actor Woody Allen uses 1 þ4 for this, according to

Ekman.)

•Underline a phrase, 1 þ2or4

•Punctuate, like a “visual comma,”1þ2 or 4

•Question mark, 1 þ2or4

•Word search, 4

•Listener response (back channel), 1 þ2

•Indicate lack of understanding, 4

Although the FACS method is laborious to apply, the results can be very inter-

esting and lessons derived from it can be possibly quite useful in daily life. For

example, facial muscle movements can reveal our implicit attitudes, our perception

of different tastes, as well as the occurrence of sexual excitement, pain, and even

different pain sources in us, such as pain from immersion of the hand in cold

water, from electric shock, and from surgery or other physical trauma (Fernández-

Dols, Carrera, & Crivelli, 2011; LeResche, 1982; Lynch, 2010; Patrick, Craig, &

Prkachin, 1986; Wendin, Allesen-Holm, & Bredie, 2011). The facial signs of pain,

measured in both infants and adults, include the following: a tightening of the mus-

cles surrounding the eyes, which narrows the eyes and raises the cheeks; the corru-

gator and other forehead muscles lower the eyebrows and wrinkle the bridge of the

nose; and the levator muscles raise the upper lip and may produce wrinkles at the

side of the nose (Prkachin & Craig, 1995). The faces of terminal cancer patients

differ according to the stage of disease progression. In the early stages, signs of

fear are more prominent (“whole eye tension combined with tension …in the

lower eyelid”), but these give way to signs of sadness (in the brow/forehead region)

in the late stage (Antonoff & Spilka, 1984–1985).

Some of the most subtle and fascinating work studying facial muscle move-

ments concerns different kinds of smiles, referred to as Duchenne smiles and non-

Duchenne smiles after the 19th-century neurologist who first described them. The

muscle called the zygomatic major, which stretches out the lips when we smile, is

the common denominator. Ekman has shown that the frequency, duration, and

intensity of action by the zygomatic major differentiated among facial displays

made by people watching different kinds of films, and it also correlated with how

much happiness people said they felt while viewing them (Ekman, Friesen, &

Ancoli, 1980). However, other muscles besides the zygomatic major are crucial to

understanding what the smile really means. Darwin proposed that in a “felt”or

genuinely happy (Duchenne) smile, the orbicularis oculi muscle—the muscle that

gives you crow’s-feet at the corner of your eyes—is involved, but that it is not

involved in a phony or mechanical (non-Duchenne) smile. Figure 9-4 shows the

difference between “felt”and “unfelt”smiles.

In another study, student nurses were shown either a pleasant or a stressful

film, and those shown the stressful film were asked to act as though the film were

pleasant. Thus, those who were watching the stressful film had to lie about their

experience. The smiles of those who saw the pleasant film were found to be felt,

happy smiles with no muscular activity associated with any of the negative

270 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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emotions. Those trying to look pleasant while watching the stressful film showed

more “masking”smiles, involving the zygomatic major but not the orbicularis

oculi, and they also showed more movements of the 10 or so muscles associated

with fear, disgust, contempt, sadness, or anger (Ekman, Friesen, & O’Sullivan,

1988). Can you tell which face in Figure 9-5 displays the felt smile? (See the end

of the chapter for the answer.)

FIGURE 9-4

Neutral face, “unfelt”smile, and “felt”smile.

Photos courtesy of Veikko SurakkaProfessor at University of Tampere, Finland.

CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 271

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In another demonstration of the value of such precise muscle coding, Matsumoto

and Willingham (2006) analyzed the expressions of athletes in the 2004 Olympic

judo competition. Compared to silver medal winners, both gold and bronze medal

winners showed many more Duchenne (enjoyment) smiles, especially the open-

mouthed variety, when receiving their medals and when on the podium. Although

we might have expected the silver medalists to be happier than bronze winners,

apparently coming in second felt like a defeat, whereas coming in third felt like a

victory over the many other athletes who did not win any medal at all. The distinc-

tion between enjoyment and more purely social smiles has been supported in

numerous studies, even among infants as young as 10 months of age (Ekman,

Davidson, & Friesen, 1990; Ekman & Friesen, 1982; Fox & Davidson, 1988).

Aside from the involvement of the eye muscle, Duchenne smiles are of less variable

duration and have a smoother quality than unfelt smiles. Moreover, the two

FIGURE 9-5

Which is the “felt,”happy smile?

a

c

b

c

Paul Ekman, Ph.D.

272 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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kinds of smiles can be distinguished from each other by naive viewers, even chil-

dren as young as 9 years old (Frank, Ekman, & Friesen, 1993; Gosselin, Perron,

Legault, & Campanella, 2002; Scherer & Ceschi, 2000), although not always with

high levels of accuracy (Hess & Kleck, 1990).

What impact might these expressions have on others? The mind-set of the

viewer matters. Bernstein, Sacco, Brown, and Claypool (2010) showed that indivi-

duals who wrote about experiences related to social exclusion expressed a greater

desire (relative to control subjects) to work with people displaying Duchenne as

opposed to non-Duchenne smiles. This suggests that, in situations in which we are

feeling excluded, our interest in cues that encourage us to approach others, such as

those associated with a smile of enjoyment, might be temporarily heightened.

The distinction between enjoyment and social smiles, although very important,

is still a probabilistic one. This means that in any particular instance, there may be

uncertainty about the smile’s true meaning. Although it may be unlikely that a

smile involving only the mouth is a true expression of pleasure or happiness, it is

possible for a smile involving the eye muscles to be feigned by someone who has

good control over the facial muscles. The fact that an enjoyment smile can be

posed, as in Figure 9-4, underscores this point. Research shows that a sizable

minority of people can deliberately produce a Duchenne smile (e.g., Krumhuber &

Manstead, 2009).

AUTOMATED FACIAL MEASUREMENT Because anatomical description of the face, such as

that used in the FACS, is so time consuming to learn and employ, there is strong

interest in developing computer programs that can recognize emotions and

describe and produce facial movement. This is a major challenge because of the

many possible muscle movements and the existence of great differences between

individual faces in shape and musculature. The challenge is especially great for sti-

muli that are not standardized in terms of head position and other movement

parameters. Early systems were not very practical, because they required attaching

small dots to the face to serve as landmarks for the computerized analysis (Kaiser

& Wehrle, 1992). Automated systems that can analyze movement under more nat-

ural circumstances and in real time are currently being developed and have very

promising validity as tested against trained human coders for recognizing discrete

emotions (Cohn & Ekman, 2005). Recently, new software (FACSGen 2.0) has

been developed that may enable researchers to reliably create various facial expres-

sions of emotion by manipulating action units on humanlike faces (Krumhuber,

Tamarit, Roesch, & Scherer, 2012). Such a tool has practical applications as a

diagnostic and training tool for those who struggle with decoding facial

expressions.

Another approach that eliminates human judgment is based on the fact that

different emotions produce distinctive facial movements, even when the movements

are too slight to be seen with the naked eye. Electrodes attached to the face mea-

sure electromyographic (EMG) responses, that is, electrical activity indicative of

incipient or very slight muscle movements that are not visible to the naked eye.

Most consistent are results showing that the zygomatic muscle, which expands the

mouth, responds under happy conditions, and the corrugator muscle between the

brows responds under sad, angry, and fearful conditions (Matsumoto, Keltner,

CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 273

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Shiota, O’Sullivan, & Frank, 2008). Studies that use EMG recordings have shown

that facial muscles respond in predictable ways to simply seeing others’emotional

expressions (Blairy, Herrera, & Hess, 1999; Dimberg, 1982; Lundqvist, 1995).

Thus, the face responds with corrugator activity to seeing angry expressions and

with zygomatic major activity to seeing happy expressions. The face also responds

in mimicking fashion to facial expressions of sadness and disgust. Nonemotion

states (e.g., confusion) as well as attitudes (e.g., positive affect in response to

images of slim people) are also detectable using EMG responses (Durso, Geldbach, &

Corballis, 2012).

MEASUREMENT BY SIMPLE OBSERVATION Although much is to be gained from the FACS’s

fine-grained anatomical analysis and EMG technology, researchers most often employ

less highly trained human observers for their facial measurement and judgment tasks.

Observers are frequently asked to count the frequency of facial expressions, rate their

intensity, or time their duration, either with or without a period of training (Kring &

Sloan, 2007). As long as adequate interobserver agreement is obtained, these simpler

approaches can have high validity. For example, Sato and Yoshikawa (2007) studied

unconscious mimicry of facial expressions by unobtrusively videotaping participants

while they watched videos of faces that were posing either angry or happy expres-

sions. In this study, untrained observers were just as good as trained FACS coders at

distinguishing which kind of video the participants had watched.

MEASURING EMOTION RECOGNITION

Emotions can be identified at levels much higher than chance from posed facial

expressions, as Ekman and colleagues (1987) have shown, and also from spontane-

ously expressed facial displays (Tcherkassof, Bollon, Dubois, Pansu, & Adam,

2007), though accuracy is lower for spontaneous expressions than for posed ones.

But before going further, measurement issues must be discussed.

FIGURE 9-6

How should these facial expressions be read?

Courtesy of Judith A. Hall

274 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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THE RESPONSE FORMAT Examine the three faces shown in Figure 9-6, then consider

the following methods of measuring your accuracy.

1. In the space provided, write in the emotion being expressed in each of the

faces you observed.

A. B. C.

2. From the choices given, select the one emotion that best describes Face A, Face B,

and Face C.

Face A Face B Face C

Rage Happiness Sadness

Anger Joy Despair

Wrath Delight Solemnity

Indignation Amusement Despondency

Resentment Pleasure Melancholy

3. From the following list, select the term that best describes Face A, Face B, and

Face C: happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, anger.

This exercise illustrates one of the many problems involved in testing the accuracy

of judgments about facial expressions or other nonverbal cues. In this case, judgment

accuracy would depend a great deal on which set of instructions the judge received.

The first testing condition, involving a free response from the judge, will produce a

wide range of responses, and researchers will be faced with the problem of deciding

whether the judge’slabelcorrespondswiththeirown“correct”label for the emotion.

The labels used by the experimenters or expressors and those used by the judges may

be different, but both may respond the same way to the actual emotion in real life or

may be thinking of the same emotion. To illustrate, some individuals may label an

angry face with the word disgusted, which, for them, means the person is thoroughly

fed up with something, whereas for others that word means the person finds some-

thing, such as a food item or an image, to be unpleasant or offensive.

In the second testing condition, the discrimination task is too difficult because

the emotions listed in each category are too much alike. We can predict low accu-

racy for judges given these instructions because different perceivers will make

slightly different construals. In contrast, the last set of instructions is the opposite

of the second set—the discrimination task may be too easy. Because the emotion

categories are discrete, we can predict high accuracy for the third condition.

Accuracy is also influenced by biases in judgment patterns. Consider a facial

judgment task with equal numbers of sad, happy, and angry faces. If a judge

guesses “happy”all the time, to state the extreme case, he or she would score as

very accurate on happy faces, and we might conclude that such a judge is an excel-

lent judge of happiness. But obviously the judge has no differential accuracy,

because she or he gave only one answer to all the items. For the same reason, the

low accuracy obtained by such a judge on the other emotions is less an index of

actual accuracy than of a rating bias. Researchers who employ multiple-choice

tests have fortunately developed ways of scoring that take rating bias into account

(Wagner, 1993). And of course we must keep in mind what level of accuracy

CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 275

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would be expected on the basis of guessing alone: with four choices, this level would

be 25 percent; with three, 33 percent; and so on. Therefore, any given level of accu-

racy cannot be evaluated in absolute terms but rather must be appraised in terms of

how much higher or lower it is than the guessing level.

Aside from these methodological factors, other factors also influence the levels

of accuracy that will be obtained by a researcher. The duration of exposure to the

facial expressions will likely have an impact, though accuracy can be obtained with

surprisingly short exposures (see Ambady, Bernieri, & Richeson, 2000; Matsumoto

et al., 2000). Also, characteristics of the test-taker can interact with the nature of

the to-be-decoded facial expression of emotion. Children, for instance, show a pos-

itivity bias on emotion judgment tasks because happy faces are more salient to

them than angry faces, and depressed individuals show a response bias for expres-

sions of disgust (Surguladze et al., 2010; Todd, Evans, Morris, & Lewis, 2011).

Lastly, men appear more likely than women to show a response bias for labeling

faces as not depicting any emotion at all (Sasson et al., 2010).

CREATING THE FACIAL STIMULUS Researchers use various methods to elicit the emo-

tional expressions that observers are asked to identify. Some simply describe a

situation and tell the actor to behave as if he or she were in that situation, others

give a list of emotions and tell the actor to portray them, and others gather

examples of facial expressions of people in real situations that are not posed or

acted. One early study (Dunlap, 1927) went to an almost comic extreme: A

camera was set up in a laboratory, ready to catch the subject’sexpressionsat

the proper moment. To elicit an expression of pain, the experimenter bent the

subject’s finger backward forcibly; to produce a startled look, the experimenter

fired a pistol behind the subject at an unexpected moment; apprehension was

elicited by telling the subject the pistol would be fired again, close to his ear, on

the count of three—at the count of two, the photo was taken. Amusement was

captured when the experimenter told the subject some jokes; disgust resulted

from the subject’s smelling a test tube containing tissues of a dead rat; and

finally—unbelievably—to elicit an expression of grief, a subject was hypnotized

and was told several members of his family had been killed in a car wreck.

“Unfortunately,”says the experimenter, “the camera could not catch intense

grief because the subject bowed his head and cried,”so he had to settle for an

expression of mild grief to be used in the study.

The idea of presenting subjects with a controlled stimulus and then observing

their reactions, although carried to an extreme in Dunlap’s study, still underlies

much research on spontaneous expressions. Expressors are shown slides or films

that differ in their content—funny, disgusting, sexy, heartwarming, and so forth—

while a video camera unobtrusively records their facial reactions. Judges later

observe the expressors’faces and try to guess which slide or film each subject had

been viewing (Buck, 1979; Zuckerman, Hall, DeFrank, & Rosenthal, 1976). This

method can capture completely unpremeditated expressions. However, because

expressors are not in a truly communicative situation, their behavior may be no

more generalizable to real social interaction than are expressors’attempts to pose

various emotions on the command of the experimenter. Another method, asking

subjects to reexperience an emotional event and then talk about it, has been used

276 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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sometimes as a more natural alternative that blends some elements of deliberate

and spontaneous communication (Halberstadt, 1986).

CONTEXT OR NOT?Though researchers might present faces of strangers out of con-

text, contextual factors obviously influence accuracy. Prior exposure to a face is

one such factor. If you are familiar with the face, and have seen it express other

emotions, you are more likely to correctly identify another emotion that you have

not seen on it before.

Observers can label facial expressions of emotion without any knowledge of

the context in which they occur, but co-occurring perceptions of the social context,

the environment, and other people will surely affect their judgments. In fact, several

studies make it clear that additional knowledge concerning the context in which a

particular facial expression occurs will affect how people judge an emotion being

expressed. The context can be visual, as when observers are shown the situation,

including people who may be in it. Or, the context can be narrative, as when

observers are told a background story and then shown a facial expression of a per-

son supposedly in the story.

Although a number of investigators have pursued the question of whether con-

text or expression dominates perceptions, the issue is far from resolved and replete

with methodological issues (Fernández-Dols & Carroll, 1997; Matsumoto &

Hwang, 2010). One consideration is cultural background; Kuwabara and Son

(2011) showed that Japanese children’s judgments concerning the proper emotional

expression of a face were more sensitive to changes in the accompanying context

than was the case with their counterparts from the United States.

Perhaps the study cited most often regarding the influence of context in face

judging is the classic one by Munn (1940). Facial expressions taken from popular

magazines were shown with and without background context. The background

information was very helpful in accurately identifying these facial expressions, as

were verbal cues describing the situation.

Another classic demonstration of context effects is Cline’s (1956) study of line

drawings to test the effect of seeing another face as part of the total context. He

found that the expression on one face influenced interpretation of the other face.

When the smiling face was paired with a glum face, the smiling face was seen as

that of a vicious, gloating, taunting bully. When the smiling face was paired with

a frowning face, the smiling face seemed peaceful, friendly, and happy. The influ-

ence of other faces has been demonstrated more recently by Neta, Davis, and

Whalen (2011), who showed that surprised facial expressions are seen as more

positively valenced when they appear in a sequence dominated by happy expres-

sions as opposed to angry ones.

Thus, the context in which a facial expression is embedded can influence our

interpretation of the expression. We may be consciously aware of and deliberating

using contextual information at times, whereas at other times this influence may

be automatic in that it occurs outside of our conscious awareness and control

(Aviezer, Bentin, Dudarev, & Hassin, 2011).

Although the question is often asked in terms of which matters more, expres-

sion or context (see the review by Fernández-Dols & Carroll, 1997), this either-or

approach is too simplistic. Often a judgment depends not on which source of

CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 277

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information wins out in observers’judgments, but rather on whether the two

sources of information can be meaningfully integrated. Sometimes this is done by

reinterpreting the information from one source, for example, by deciding that a

“sad”story context might actually produce angry feelings, too. Other times, a true

integration is made, as when a facial expression of “fear”plus a context of

“anger”produces the overall interpretation of “pain”(Carroll & Russell, 1996).

EMOTIONS INFERRED FROM THE FACE

Many factors influence how emotions are inferred from the face, but the compel-

ling fact remains that they can be inferred and often with extremely high levels of

accuracy. Some emotions are more likely to be confused, but six basic emotions—

happiness, anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, and fear—are judged with very high

accuracy among observers in many studies. In one large database, the ordering of

accuracy from highest to lowest followed the list just given, but the emotions dif-

fered in how accuracy was influenced by how long the expression was shown

(Calvo & Lundqvist, 2008). Happiness was equally easy to judge across exposures

ranging from 25 to 500 milliseconds—that is, up to a half a second—but all of the

other emotions showed increases in accuracy as the exposures got longer.

Figures 9-7 to 9-12 show these six basic emotions with a description of their

characteristic facial actions, each of which can also be described in terms of which

action units are involved. These expressions are recognized at high levels not only

in the United States but also around the globe (see Chapters 2 and 3; Ekman,

Sorenson, & Friesen, 1969; Izard, 1971). More recently, Biehl and colleagues

(1997) demonstrated that seven emotions shown on the faces of both Japanese

and Caucasian individuals were judged with high levels of agreement by viewers in

Hungary, Japan, Poland and Sumatra, and by Caucasians and recently immigrated

Vietnamese in the United States. We can argue that in today’sworldofglobalmedia

exposure and cross-cultural contact, such a result is not at all surprising. Ekman and

his colleagues set about to find out how remote tribal people in New Guinea, who

had not been exposed to Western facial expression norms, would respond. Even in

New Guinea, photos of U.S. citizens’faces showing these six basic emotionswere

judged correctly for the most part. Moreover, some New Guineans were photo-

graphed while showing how they would react in different situations, such as

“you feel sad because your child died,”and U.S. respondents later guessed with

great accuracy which scenario was being communicated (Ekman & Friesen, 1971).

Most cross-cultural research has dealt with depictions of the face showing very

pure configurations for the major emotions. However, as noted earlier, facial

expressions can be complex blends, with different muscles simultaneously showing

elements of different emotions. The question of whether cross-cultural universality

also applies to secondary, more subtle expressions led Ekman and a team of collea-

gues to introduce a new methodology into the cross-cultural research. These

researchers obtained ratings of faces on a variety of emotions from subjects in 10

places around the world, including Estonia, Sumatra, Scotland, Japan, Italy, and

Hong Kong. There was dramatic agreement across cultures not only on the

primary emotion being shown by the faces but also on the secondary emotion

(Ekman et al., 1987).

278 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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FIGURE 9-7

Surprise: The brows are raised so they are curved and high. The skin below the brow is

stretched, and horizontal wrinkles go across the forehead. The eyelids are opened: The upper lid

is raised, and the lower lid is drawn down; the white of the eye—the sclera—shows above the iris

and often below as well. The jaw drops open so the lips and teeth are parted, but there is no

tension or stretching of the mouth.

FIGURE 9-8

Fear: The brows are raised and drawn together. The wrinkles in the forehead are in the center,

not across the entire forehead. The upper eyelid is raised, exposing the sclera, and the lower eye-

lid is tensed and drawn up. The mouth is open, and the lips are either tensed slightly and drawn

back or stretched and drawn back.

Paul Ekman, Ph.D.

CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 279

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FIGURE 9-9

Disgust: The upper lip is raised. The lower lip is also raised and pushed up to the upper lip, or is

lowered and slightly protruding. The nose is wrinkled, and the cheeks are raised. Lines show

below the lower lid, and the lid is pushed up but not tense. The brow is lowered, lowering the

upper lid.

FIGURE 9-10

Anger: The brows are lowered and drawn together, and vertical lines appear between them. The

lower lids are tensed and may or may not be raised. The upper lids are tensed and may or may

not be lowered by the action of the brow. The eyes have a hard stare and may have a bulging

appearance. The lips are in either of two basic positions: pressed firmly together, with the corners

straight or down, or open and tensed in a squarish shape, as if shouting. The nostrils may be

dilated, but this is not essential to the anger facial expression and may also occur in sadness.

There is ambiguity unless anger is registered in all three facial areas.

Paul Ekman, Ph.D. Paul Ekman, Ph.D.

280 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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FIGURE 9-12

Sadness: The inner corners of the eyebrows are drawn up. The skin below the eyebrows is trian-

gulated, with the inner corner up. The upper eyelid inner corners are raised. The corners of the

lips are down, or the lips are trembling.

FIGURE 9-11

Happiness: The corners of the lips are drawn back and up. The mouth may or may not be

parted, with teeth exposed or not. A wrinkle, the nasolabial fold, runs down from the nose to the

outer edge beyond the lip corners. The cheeks are raised. The lower eyelids show wrinkles below

them and may be raised but not tense. Crow’s-feet wrinkles go outward from the outer corners

of the eyes (covered by hair in these photographs).

Paul Ekman, Ph.D. Paul Ekman, Ph.D.

CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 281

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Although accurate recognition of certain emotions is generally well above

chance everywhere it has been tested, variability still exists between individuals

and from place to place. Variation within a culture and between cultures is still

being investigated. Young and Hugenberg (2010) observed that, for people in the

same culture, accuracy is better when they are judging facial expressions from

members of their in-group (namely, people who they think have the same personal-

ity type as themselves) as opposed to members from an out-group (namely, people

who they think have a different personality type).

There is some evidence that people from different cultures, such as East Asian

and Western Caucasian, have different expectations about the regions of the face

associated with the expression of basic emotions (Jack, Caldara, & Schyns, 2012).

In addition, Russell (1994) found that facial expressions, mainly of Westerners’

faces, were more accurately recognized by other Western groups than by

non-Western groups. An in-group advantage has been documented, showing that

people have an advantage when judging cues expressed by members of their own

cultural, national, or ethnic group (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002, 2003).

One reason for such an advantage is the existence of “emotion dialects,”or cul-

turally learned ways of expressing different emotional messages through nonverbal

cues. Such dialects, when shared between senders and receivers, promote accurate

judgments. Elfenbein and Ambady (2003) measured accuracy in judging photographs

of mainland Chinese people in China and Caucasian Americans expressing different

emotions through the face. The groups whose accuracy was tested were mainland

Chinese people in China, mainland Chinese people in the United States, Chinese

Americans—that is, U.S. citizens of Chinese extraction—and non-Asian U.S. citizens.

These four groups’accuracy conformed exactly to the authors’“dialect”predictions:

The more the group was familiar with mainland Chinese expressions, the better they

were on Chinese compared to Caucasian expressions, and the more the group was

familiar with American expressions, the better they were on Caucasian compared to

Chinese expressions. In addition, an analysis of how long the Chinese-American fam-

ilies had been in the United States showed that the longer the families had been in the

country, the better they were at judging Caucasian compared to Chinese faces. These

data lend strong support to the emotion dialects concept.

Although researchers do not agree on how many basic emotions there are,

most research describing facial movements associated with emotion has concen-

trated on the six shown in Figures 9-7 to 9-12. Recently, attention has turned to

other expressions, including shame, embarrassment, compassion, contempt, and

pride. Whether these represent basic emotions signaled by universally recognizable

facial displays is debatable. Widen, Christy, Hewett, and Russell (2011), for exam-

ple, found that agreement on the emotions being communicated by facial displays

of shame, embarrassment, compassion, and contempt dropped when participants

had to freely choose an emotion label for each of the faces. Nonetheless, these and

other expressions are believed to be signaled by specific cues:

1. Contempt is thought to be signaled by a slight tightening and raising of the

corner of the lip on one side (Ekman et al., 1987).

2. Threat is conveyed by several facial signals, as shown in Figure 9-13. The faces

are ordered so that decreasing ratings of perceived threat go from left to right

282 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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FIGURE 9-13

Facial stimuli in which four cues to threat are manipulated.

Source: From Tipples, J. (2007). Wide eyes and an open mouth enhance facial threat, Cognition and Emotion, 21,535–557,

CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 283

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deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

in each row, with the highest ratings occurring for the face on the upper left

and the lowest ratings occurring for the face on the lower right (Tipples,

2007). V-shaped brows, wide eyes, open mouth, and down-turned mouth all

produced higher threat ratings.

3. Facial signs for anxiety have been shown to include increased blinking and

more facial movements associated with fear, such as a horizontal mouth

stretch and more facial movements overall (Harrigan & O’Connell, 1996).

4. Pride in its prototypical form includes a small smile in conjunction with other

cues: head tilted back slightly, expanded posture, and hands on the hips (Tracy

& Robins, 2004, 2007).

5. Embarrassment has been shown to be signaled by looking down, shifting the

eyes, turning the head away, touching the face, and engaging in “controlled

smiles,”which are smiles a person tries to counter with other facial move-

ments (Keltner, 1995). Keltner has also studied the temporal ordering and

relative duration of the components of facial embarrassment (Figure 9-14).

Lastly, it is important to remember that facial expressions that signal particular

emotional reactions (how you are feeling) might also signal important social information

FIGURE 9-14

Prototypical embarrassment response. The mean duration of each action is equal to the interval,

beginning with the leftmost edge of the photograph and ending with the end of the arrow.

Paul Ekman, Ph.D.

284 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

(what you think about a situation). Chapman, Kim, Susskinf, and Anderson (2009)

found that the same muscles used to signal bad taste (gustatory disgust) were activated

in response to unfair treatment (moral disgust), and Cannon, Schnall, and White (2011)

noted that displays of facial disgust in response to violations of fairness were related

to subsequent moral judgments. Thus, a facial expression of disgust might signal

that a situation, such as unfair treatment, is morally disgusting to you.

PHYSIOLOGY AND THE FACE

INTERNALIZERS AND EXTERNALIZERS

You must have at least one friend with a face that remains as still as a rock, no

matter how much excitement swirls around him or her. You also have friends

with faces that seem as sensitive as a butterfly’s wings to every shift of the emo-

tional winds. What you may not know is that these differences, aside from being

quite real and enduring, also are associated with differences in physiological func-

tioning. Internalizers, those who show little facial expression, experience high phys-

iological reactivity on measures such as heart rate and electrodermal responding;

externalizers, the expressive ones, show the opposite pattern (Buck, Savin, Miller, &

Caul, 1972; Lanzetta & Kleck, 1970; Notarius & Levenson, 1979). Most theorizing

about this relationship has pointed to learned factors; for example, the notion that

society encourages people to suppress their overt emotional reactions, and that

individuals who do so must experience their emotions or arousal in some other

way, perhaps through internal activation of the nervous system. The metaphor of

discharge can be applied: The emotion is released, either externally or internally

(Notarius & Levenson, 1979). However, research on newborns finds a similar nega-

tive relationship between expressiveness and physiological response, suggesting that

inherited temperamental factors may also be at work (Field, 1982).

FACIAL EXPRESSION AND HEALTH

Given these differences, it is intriguing to consider a possible connection between

expressiveness and physical health. Could restraining the outward expression

of emotion be damaging to health? Friedman and his colleagues (Friedman &

Booth-Kewley, 1987; Friedman, Hall, & Harris, 1985) pursued this idea and

found that, as predicted, a “repressed”style of expression was related to indica-

tions of coronary artery disease and even to the actual occurrence of a heart attack.

King and Emmons (1990) found some support for the hypothesis that ambivalence

over emotional expression would be associated with poorer health. Malatesta,

Jonas, and Izard (1987) found that women who showed less expression on their

face when talking about an angry experience had more arthritis symptoms, and

women who showed less facial expression during a sad account had more skin pro-

blems. Promising evidence for a relation of emotional expression/suppression to

health comes from research on alexithymia, a term used to describe patients who

have a pronounced inability to describe their own emotions. These patients are

deficient in facial expressiveness and also seem to suffer from a disproportionate

number of psychosomatic ailments (Buck, 1993).

CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 285

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FACIAL FEEDBACK

Adding to the complexity and fascination regarding the relation between the face

and physiology is the facial feedback hypothesis put forth by Darwin, who believed

that if an emotion is freely expressed, it will be intensified. The facial feedback

hypothesis states that expressions on the face can intensify emotional experience

via direct connections between facial muscles and emotion centers in the brain,

even without any conscious awareness of what the face is showing.

EMBODIED COGNITION

The mind and body used to be

thought of as two separate enti-

ties. Later, it was understood

that the human brain is respon-

sible for what we think of as

our mind, and that our mind

controls our bodies. We can

make the decision to smile, for

example, when we want to let

another person know that we

like him or her.

However, can our body

influence our mind? Yes,

according to those who sub-

scribe to the notion of embo-

died cognition (Lakoff &

Johnson, 1999). One example

is how motor processes, such as those involved in smiling, can influence our thoughts about emotion states.

Consider a situation in which you see a Duchenne smile on another person’s face. If you so happen to

mimic that expression, you are activating motor processes in your face that are linked to your cognitive-

based experience and understanding of happiness. This, in turn, might help you recognize happiness in the

other person. These ideas are currently being explored by those who are interested in applying the notion of

embodied cognition to the study of nonverbal behavior (Neidenthal, Mermillod, Maringer, & Hess, 2010).

The evidence for this perspective on emotion recognition is mixed. Facial mimicry does provide informa-

tion that aids the process of judging the meaning of a smile (Maringer, Krumhuber, Fischer, & Niedenthal,

2011). But what if your ability to mimic another’s facial expression was impaired (e.g., from Botox injec-

tions, which can paralyze muscles used in some facial expressions)? Would emotion recognition be impaired

as well? Research shows that we are slower at reading emotion-evoking sentences when we cannot facially

express the emotion that the sentences were designed to arouse in us (Havas, Gienberg, Gutowski, Lucarelli,

& Davidson, 2010). However, other research shows that feedback from facial expressions is not necessary

for the experience of emotion states or for the recognition of others’emotion states (Bogart & Matsumoto,

2010; Davis, Senghas, Brandt, & Ochsner, 2010). It could be that facial mimicry is helpful—but not always

required—in identifying emotion states. When we cannot or do not mimic the other person’s facial expres-

sion, we may still be accurate by calling upon our beliefs about how a person should be feeling in a partic-

ular situation, or by drawing on our knowledge of what movements are associated with what emotions.

sippakorn yamkasikorn/Photos.com

286 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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Is the facial feedback hypothesis valid? The idea that emotions can be regulated

via facial behavior—that we can create authentic emotional experience from inau-

thentic outward expressions—has important ramifications for child rearing,

psychotherapy, and many other domains (Izard, 1990). The facial feedback hypoth-

esis has been debated at length, in part because early studies had methodological

problems (Matsumoto, 1987). Such an experiment asks subjects to pose their faces

in various ways and then measures their emotional state through self-report (Laird,

1974; Tourangeau & Ellsworth, 1979). The flaw in such a study is that expressors

may realize their posed expression is meant to look like fear or happiness. If this

happens, it is no surprise that they obediently report feeling those emotions.

Fortunately, studies exist that do not share this problem. In a particularly well-

designed study, a group of investigators disguised the purpose of the facial posing

by telling participants they were helping develop ways for persons with disabilities

to hold a writing implement; it could be held between the teeth, which naturally

expands the lips, or it could be held by the lips, which contracts them. Figure 9-15

illustrates these mouth positions. Unknown to the participants, these two manipu-

lations differ in whether the smiling muscles around the mouth are activated.

Those holding the pen between their teeth, which activated the smiling muscles,

rated cartoons as funnier than the other participants did (Strack, Martin, &

Stepper, 1988). Thus, the position of the facial muscles can indeed “feed back”to

influence the expressor’s emotion state. Subsequent research using this same

pencil-in-the-teeth paradigm showed that inducing expressors to activate their eye-

corner muscles as well as their mouth-widening muscles, which produce Duchenne

smiles, resulted in higher levels of enjoyment when viewing positive video clips than

occurred when expressors made non-Duchenne smiles (Soussignan, 2002). This

makes sense when you consider that the Duchenne smile is said to reflect more gen-

uine positive emotion than the non-Duchenne smile.

FIGURE 9-15

Illustration of the technique used to contract the different facial muscles: left, lips condition;

right, teeth condition.

tating conditions of the human smile: A nonobtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis. Strack, Fritz; Martin,

Leonard L.; Stepper, Sabine. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 54(5), May 1988, 768–777.

CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 287

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Ekman, Levenson, and Friesen (1983), in a facial feedback experiment,

also demonstrated that moving particular facial muscles on command, as well as

“reliving”past emotional experiences, produces specific patterns of reaction in the

autonomie nervous system. Heart rate and finger temperature increased more in

anger than in happiness, and anger and fear were similar in terms of heart rate

increases but differed in finger temperature. Perhaps these results translate into the

familiar feelings of being flushed or hot when angry and of having cold hands

when afraid.

Strack and Neumann (2000) extended the facial feedback phenomenon beyond

emotional responses to the kinds of judgments we make about others. Under the

guise of studying how working on a computer produces tension, participants were

asked to furrow their brows or not while doing a computer judgment task. On the

task, participants made ratings of how famous various celebrities and noncelebri-

ties were. Those who maintained the furrowed brow rated the individuals as less

famous than those in the control group, presumably because the furrowed brow

unconsciously put them in a skeptical frame of mind.

Though most feedback studies have involved the face, other body parts can

also produce feedback effects. In one study, researchers manipulated upright versus

slumped postures using differently designed chairs and showed that if participants

were upright rather than slumped when hearing that they had performed well on

an earlier task, they experienced more pride in their performance (Stepper &

Strack, 1993).

Not much is known about the exact mechanisms that produce psychological

changes, such as emotions, following face and body movement. Although well-

designed studies can rule out a cognitive explanation—that is, that people simply

report the feelings they know their movements suggest—the nature of the physio-

logical mechanism is still an open question. Although most investigators assume

feedback occurs through the nervous system, a novel theory called the vascular the-

ory of emotional efference holds that certain facial movements and breathing pat-

terns change the temperature of the blood flowing into the brain, which then

influences affective state, suggesting that perhaps cooler blood produces more posi-

tive affect (Mclntosh, Zajonc, Vig, & Emerick, 1997; Zajonc, 1985).

Thus, it appears that our own expressions, whether deliberately put on or

spontaneously mimicked in response to others’expressions, can produce corre-

sponding emotions or can intensify or deintensify experiences already in progress.

The process of “emotional contagion”(Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994) may

contribute to our ability to experience empathy and understand others’emotional

states. Indeed, when Surakka and Hietanen (1998) showed the “felt”and “unfelt”

smiles shown in Figure 9-4 to viewers, they found that EMG recordings of both eye

and cheek muscles were stronger for those who saw the felt smiles and that more

pleasure was subsequently experienced by those who saw those smiles.

Though mimicry of other’sfacialexpressionscanoccur entirely without aware-

ness, it is not immune to social influences. In a good demonstration of this, facial

EMG responses—specifically, the zygomatic major responding to a happy facial

expression and the corrugator responding to a sad facial expression—occurred only

when the participants had acquired positive associations to the target person by

being told she had traits such as niceness and likeability. When the target person had

288 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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negative traits, such as being “deceitful”and “aggressive,”participants’faces showed

no mimicking activity (Likowski, Mühlberger, Seibt, Pauli, & Weyers, 2008).

Researchers studying the face and physiology also have discovered that posed

and spontaneous facial expressions are controlled by different pathways within the

brain. This has been demonstrated by certain forms of brain injury that result in a

person losing the ability to produce facial expressions deliberately but not losing

the capacity to laugh, cry, frown, and so on when genuinely experiencing an emo-

tion; the reverse form of disability also exists (Rinn, 1984). When brain damage

occurs, facial expressiveness is especially impaired when the damage is to the right

hemisphere of the brain, which is considered the more nonverbal hemisphere (Buck

& Duffy, 1980). Researchers have found that the left side of a person’s face tends

to be more expressive (Borod, Koff, Yecker, Santschi, & Schmidt, 1998; Nicholls,

Wolfgang, Clode, & Lindell, 2002; Skinner & Mullen, 1991) because the left half

of the face is controlled by the right hemisphere. However, consistent with the

notion of separate neural pathways, this asymmetry is present only for posed

expressions; spontaneous, more genuine ones tend to be symmetrical (Ekman,

Hager, & Friesen, 1981; Skinner & Mullen, 1991). Perhaps now you will think

differently about your friend with the crooked smile.

Thus far we have mostly examined the face in terms of what its movements

mean. But researchers also have asked broader questions about real-world corre-

lates of facial expression.

THE SOCIAL IMPACT OF FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

Facial expressions, both intended and spontaneous, exert many influences on other

people. In this section, we present only a sampling of this research. The strong

impact of facial expressions takes on special significance because people have a

great deal of control over their faces. Most discussions of the face center on emo-

tions and how the face reveals what emotions are being felt. But several times we

have mentioned the distinction between posed and spontaneous expressions. By its

very nature, a posed expression means that people need not actually feel what they

are showing. The face becomes a tool of self-presentation, something used to create

a desirable image in the eyes of others, and of social influence, something capable

of producing desirable impressions in someone else. Ironically, because people are

likely to assume that the face is an honest window into another’s true feelings,

they may be particularly vulnerable to manipulation by someone who uses his or

her facial expression to create a false impression.

An important application of knowledge of facial expressions occurs in the

helping professions. One such application is ascertaining the existence and sever-

ity of mental disorders. For example, when distressed, toddlers with autism

show less expressivity in their face than do those children without the disorder

(Esposito, Venuti, & Bornstein, 2011). Ekman, Matsumoto, and Friesen (1997)

noted that more contempt and more “unfelt”happy expressions at the time of

hospital admission were related to less improvement at discharge, and that dif-

ferent diagnostic groups showed different facial emotion patterns: People with

major depression showed more sadness and disgust; people in a manic condition

showed more “felt”and “unfelt”happiness and less anger, disgust, and sadness;

CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 289

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and people with schizophrenia showed fear and low levels of all the other coded

emotions.

In an even more precise and revealing investigation of depressive individuals’

expressions, Reed, Sayette, and Cohn (2007) asked how such individuals would

handle a situation in which a positive stimulus—in this case, a video clip of the

comedian Chris Rock—could not be avoided. Would they be unmoved by the stim-

ulus or would they respond with happy feelings and expressions, the same as indi-

viduals with no depressive tendencies? The answer was some of both. The video

affected all participants equally in terms of self-rated happiness and number of eli-

cited smiles. However, participants with current depression symptoms and a

depression history were five times more likely to try to control their smiles with

additional muscle movements than other participants (see Figure 9-16). It was as

though these individuals were fighting off the urge to smile.

The patient’s face may not be the only face that is important in a clinical situa-

tion, however. There is reason to believe that physicians’and therapists’facial

expressions have an impact on patients. Ambady, Koo, Rosenthal, and Winograd

(2002) found that the facial expressions of physical therapists predicted changes in

elderly patients’physical and psychological functioning over the course of treat-

ment. Specifically, facial “distancing”or not smiling and not looking at the patient

was associated with decreases in functioning, whereas facial expressiveness—that

is, smiling, nodding, and frowning—was associated with increases in functioning.

Research shows that adults’smiles and other expressions influence babies’

moods and responses to the environment (Cappella, 1981). Extensive work has

been conducted on the interaction between mothers who have depression and

their infants (Field, 2002; Lundy, Field, & Pickens, 1996). For example, depressed

mothers seem less able to identify happy expressions in infants, suggesting that they

may be less responsive to such cues, including reciprocating them (Arteche et al.,

2011). Infants of depressed mothers have less expressive faces than other infants, do

not orient as well visually to adults, and show more facial negativity. In Field’s

(2002) study, the depressed mothers displayed the same kinds of behaviors that

were then seen in their infants, such as more negative facial expressions and less

looking around, as well as less vocalization and less tactile stimulation.

FIGURE 9-16

Depressed person’s response to a funny film: neutral, to smile, to smile control. Numbers refer to

which muscle action units were activated.

Source: From Reed, Sayette, and Cohn, 2007.

Dr. Lawrence Ian Reed

290 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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Savitsky, Izard, Kotsch, and Christy (1974) were interested in whether facial

expressions of emotion by a victim would have any effect on the aggressor’s behav-

ior. When individuals thought they were controlling the amount of electric shock

that another person, the victim, would get, they gave more shocks to victims who

responded with expressions of happiness and smiles and fewer to victims who dis-

played expressions of anger.

Facial expressions also influence perceptions of trustworthiness (Krumhuber

et al., 2007; Stouten & De Cremer, 2010). Krumhuber and colleagues (2007)

manipulated a video of several potential partners in a game in which people could

choose to cooperate or not, where cooperation implied trust and where mutual

cooperation would result in higher monetary rewards for both. The partners’faces

showed an authentic-looking smile, an inauthentic-looking smile, or a neutral

expression. Participants chose the authentically smiling person to cooperate with,

rating that person the most trustworthy.

Although defendants’faces are scrutinized closely in the courtroom, their faces

are not the only influential ones. In a cleverly designed experiment, Hart (1995)

obtained videotapes of judges reading standard instructions to juries in real trials,

and he also found out how those judges personally leaned in terms of guilt or inno-

cence. These videotapes were then spliced onto a different trial, and the whole

sequence was shown to groups of role-playing jurors. Thus, these jurors were

being instructed by judges who were known to be biased, although about a differ-

ent case. Jurors’verdicts of guilt and innocence were significantly influenced by the

judges’facial expressions and tone of voice, thus demonstrating that judges’expres-

sions can influence jurors even though the judges are supposed to remain impartial

in their behavior.

Children’s facial expressions and reactions to others’expressions have implica-

tions for education and law. Berhenke, Miller, Brown, Seifer, and Dickstein (2011)

demonstrated that kindergartners’expressions offered clues to their motivation,

and thus, potential readiness for success in school; for instance, shame expressions

(from facial, vocal, and behavioral cues) while working on challenging tasks were

linked to greater math and reading skills. With respect to the law, there has been

much interest and debate about whether children can give accurate eyewitness

reports, such as when they are interviewed about possible sexual abuse. In an inter-

view situation, it appears that the interviewer’s facial expressions, combined with

body movements, can influence a child’s responses. In a study by Almerigogna,

Ost, Akehurst, and Fluck (2008), an adult quizzed a child about what the child

could remember from a learning exercise the previous week. When the interviewer

smiled and refrained from fidgeting, the children gave more accurate and honest

answers than when the adult fidgeted and did not smile. Furthermore, children in

the nonsmiling-fidgeting situation were more likely to falsely report being touched

by the teacher in that exercise when asked a leading question.

Interactions between service providers and customers provide yet another

forum in which facial expressions can have impact. In an experiment in which

role-playing “customers”watched videos of hotel clerks interacting with someone

who was checking in, the clerk who displayed a smile that appeared authentic

received higher customer satisfaction ratings than the clerk whose smile appeared

inauthentic—but only when the clerk was performing his or her tasks competently.

CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 291

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When the clerk made errors, the kind of smile had no impact (Grandey, Fisk,

Mattila, Jansen, & Sideman, 2005). Thus, the context was an important qualifier

of whether the smile mattered.

Facial expressions are related to gender stereotyping as well as discrimination

against women in the media and small groups. Leppard, Ogletree, and Wallen

(1993) noted that, in medical advertisements, men were more often shown with

serious/neutral facial expression, whereas women were more often shown with

pleasant expressions. Butler and Geis (1990) investigated male and female leaders

in groups. Each group had a male or female leader who had, unknown to the

group members, been trained to offer identical suggestions and arguments.

However, the group members, who were the subjects of study, displayed more

pleased responses (smiling and nodding) and fewer displeased responses (furrowed

brow, mouth tightening, head shaking) when listening to the male leader than

when listening to the female leader. Group members were apparently unaware of

their gender-biased behavior or denied it, for they later revealed no gender bias in

written evaluations of the leaders. The potential importance of this finding in real

groups is obvious: Subtle signals of devaluation sent by audience members could

undermine a female leader’s performance and could even create negativity in audi-

ence members who were not initially biased against her.

Another connection between the face and sex discrimination was made by

Archer’s discovery of the “face-ism”or facial prominence phenomenon. Specifi-

cally, in magazine and newspaper pictures, proportionately more of the picture is

devoted to men’s faces, whereas pictures of women show more of the body.

Archer, Iritani, Kimes, and Barrios (1983) found this pattern in publications from

11 different cultures and in artwork over 6 centuries, as well as in people’s amateur

drawings. Both Archer and later researchers (Zuckerman, 1986) have made the

case that face-ism is a form of devaluing women. Consistent with the view that

depicting less of the face devalues the person in the picture, Zuckerman and Kieffer

(1994) demonstrated that face-ism favoring whites over blacks also exists in maga-

zines and art. Lastly, Matthews (2007) found higher facial prominence in magazine

photographs of individuals who had intellectually oriented as opposed to physically

oriented occupations, especially if the person in the photograph was a man.

The smile is a profoundly influential social cue that has been studied in many

contexts. People reciprocate smiles quite predictably (Hinsz & Tomhave, 1991;

Jorgenson, 1978). You can imagine how, after returning someone’s smile, facial

feedback or attributional processes could produce real changes in your emotional

state or your attitude toward the smiler (e.g., “I just smiled at Jim. I must really

like him!”). Smiles are positive reinforcers that can change behavior just as other,

more traditional reinforcers can. For example, receiving a smile from one stranger

can make you more helpful toward a different stranger (Guéguen & de Gail,

2003; Solomon et al., 1981), and receiving a smile from your waitperson can lead

you to leave a larger tip (Tidd & Lockard, 1978).

Angry faces are a potent stimulus, too. In a series of experiments, Hansen and

Hansen (1988) compared people’s ability to pick out an angry face in a crowd of

happy faces to their ability to pick out a happy face in a crowd of angry faces. As

they predicted, picking out the angry face was faster and more error free than pick-

ing out the happy face. Seeing angry faces might also encourage us to feel guilty

292 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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(perhaps we have done something wrong) as well as the desire to stop doing some-

thing that the angry person disapproves of (Giner-Sorolla & Espinoza, 2011;

Wilkowski, 2012). All in all, perhaps our survival as a species has some relation

to our sensitivity to possible threat, whether physical or social, signaled by others’

angry facial expressions.

The influence exerted on us by others’facial expressions is not limited to those

faces that we consciously see and take note of. Nonconscious, subliminal percep-

tion effects have been uncovered as well. Murphy and Zajonc (1993) showed peo-

ple a happy or an angry face for only 4 milliseconds, an interval much too short to

allow for conscious perception of the faces, followed by unfamiliar stimuli—in this

case, written Chinese characters. When the experimenters asked the participants

how much they liked each Chinese character, they found that characters preceded

by a happy face were liked more than those preceded by an angry face. More

recently, Dimberg, Thunberg, and Elmehed (2000) found that subliminally expos-

ing people to happy or angry facial expressions produced corresponding facial

movements according to EMG measurements. In this case, both the stimulus (the

faces seen) and the response (the small facial movements picked up by EMG

recording) occurred nonconsciously.

SUMMARY

The face is a multimessage system. It can com-

municate information regarding personality,

interest, and responsiveness during interaction,

emotional states, and how people want to pres-

ent themselves to others. Although we know

that people associate certain personality charac-

teristics with certain expressions and facial

features, we do not fully know how accurate

these impressions are. We know the face is used

as a conversational regulator that opens and

closes communication channels, complements

and qualifies other behaviors, and replaces spoken

messages.

Facial expressions are very complex entities

to deal with. Of all the areas of the body, the

face seems to elicit the best external and inter-

nal feedback, which makes it easy for us to

follow a variety of facial display rules. Not all

facial displays represent single emotions; some

are blends of several emotions. Sometimes we

show aspects of an emotional display when we

are not actually feeling emotional, as with

facial emblems that represent commentary on

emotions. At other times the emotion we are

feeling is not very predictably shown on our

face. The question of how often the face

spontaneously reveals emotional experiences in

daily life is hotly contested.

We noted some measurement issues involved

in the study of facial expressions: the complexity

of the decisions observers are asked to make, sim-

ulated as opposed to real expressions, the method

of presenting the face to the observer—films,

photos, and the like—and knowledge of the con-

text. Naturally, all these factors may impinge on

our accuracy in identifying facial expressions of

emotion.

Accuracy in judging the face tends to be high,

at least when prototypic expressions are pre-

sented. Furthermore, certain basic emotions

have been found to be accurately judged in cul-

tures around the world: anger, fear, disgust, sad-

ness, happiness, surprise, and contempt. To

understand what the face actually does during

the expression of emotion, anatomically based

coding systems, such as the FACS, have been

developed. The FACS can identify which muscles

are involved in different kinds of expressions.

A psychophysiological approach has added

much to our understanding of facial behavior.

People with more expressive faces have less activ-

ity in their autonomic nervous systems than do

CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 293

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less expressive people; this is interesting partly

because of its health implications. Under certain

circumstances, facial movements can influence

the emotions felt by the expressor; thus, the

face may not only read out emotions but also

actually produce them. Studies of minute facial

movements show that people unconsciously

mimic the facial expressions of others, even

those expressions too quick to be consciously

perceived. And researchers are finding out

more about which activities of the brain and

nervous system are associated with different

emotions. We concluded with a sampling of

studies showing that facial expressions can

have a strong impact on the people in our social

environment.

Answer to Figure 9–5: b. (All the others have traces of disgust or sadness.)

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Facial expressions can show emotions, but

they also are used for conversation manage-

ment. Give examples of each, and state

which function you consider the most

important.

2. Consider men’s and women’s nonverbal

behavior. Does the concept of display rules

help you explain any differences between the

sexes?

3. As noted in the chapter, the distinction

between a feigned or posed facial display

and an authentic or spontaneous one may be

hard to make. Discuss the issue of intention-

ality in facial expressions. Is it important to be

able to make such a distinction? Do you think

you can make such a distinction yourself, and

if so, how do you think you do it?

4. The chapter gives examples of how the face

is a potent influence on others. Think of

some other examples of this, and discuss

whether the face is more or less influential

than other nonverbal channels in terms of

its social impact.

5. Can you think of any occasions when you

might have experienced intensification, or

even creation, of an emotion as a result of

facial feedback?

6. Some people are more aware of the expres-

sions that occur on their faces than other

people. Discuss this phenomenon. What

kind of people do you think are more self-

observant than others? What impact do you

think this kind of self-accuracy has?

7. To see a demonstration of the FACSGen 2.0

program for generating facial expressions on

humanlike faces, go to the following Web

address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

wHg3a9z0alg.

294 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’BEHAVIOR

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